Simply Abu Dhabi XXIV

A fter 26 years in the motoring business, rarely am I left open mouthed and gaping in astonishment – and yet there I was, standing flat footed at the entrance to a small garage in England that houses Jaguar’s newly named Jaguar Land Rover Classic Division, jaw dropped. I had literally just stepped back almost 60 years to a workshop that was building hand-made sports cars to the exact rules of Jaguar in 1957 and is about to sell them again as new cars in 2017. This is not a hobby business but Jaguar itself, and it has just launched the ‘brand new’ 1957 Jaguar XKSS with all the support and backup you’d get from buying a new car. Built at Jaguar’s Experimental Shop, there will only ever be nine XKSS models, all built to the exact same specs as the original XKSS in 1957, so for this expertise, don’t expect any change from $1.2 million (AED4.5m), which I guarantee is a bargain. And it’s even more a bargain when you consider the back story as to how the XKSS came to be reborn and the fact that original examples pull more than ten times that at auction these days. Back in 1956 Jaguar was riding a wave of success having won the Le Mans 24-hour race for the third time with the D-Type Jaguar that was launched in 1954 and today commands millions of dollars at auction. The actual 1955 Le Mans 24-hour winner, chassis number XKD501, was sold last April by RM Sotheby’s Auctions inMonterey, California, for $21.78 millionmaking it the most expensive British automobile ever sold at auction. By Damien Reid Jaguar XKSS