By the end of 1956, Jaguar decided to make a road going version of the LeMans winning D-Type race car. Essentially it was a D-Type with a full width windscreen, a passenger door in addition to the drivers door, a soft top hood and a rear luggage rack. In terms of performance it was the McLaren F1 of it's day, with the same 250bhp straight six found in the D-Type racer.
Only 16 XK-SS's made their way out of Jaguar's Brown's Lane factory as no more were built after a catastrophic factory fire early on in 1957. Several more were in production and others were awaiting delivery at the time of the fire and were consequently destroyed. Jaguar were more concerned with getting their factory back together and re-starting production of it's bread and butter cars than with making more of the exclusive XK-SS. No more spare D-Type shells were available either after the fire, so the reason the XK-SS was conceived (to use up the extra D-Type shells that weren't needed for the racing program) had disappeared. Consequently the surviving XK-SS's are among the most valuable Jaguar's around today due to their rarity.
One very famous XK-SS owner was the actor Steve McQueen. He was a car nut and used his XK-SS regularly. AUTOart make a "Steve McQueen" version of this model, which like McQueen's car is green with a black interior.
This version is in metallic blue with a red interior. The interior is nicely detailed with a wooden steering wheel, a fire extinguisher and a realistic looking hood. The tail has a opening hatch which reveals a spare tire. The bonnet opens to reveal a detailed straight six engine, and the "Dunlop" wheels have a realistic dull metal finish. Unusually for an AUTOart, there is no brake detail at all. As the wheels mostly obscure the brakes, it isn't noticeable, except when you open the bonnet and you can see the back of the front wheel is plain black plastic with no brake disc. I feel on a premium model some sort of brake detail should be included even if it isn't easily seen. Plus, the XK-SS was noted for having disc brakes, which was unusual for a road car in the 1950s, so for me the model should have had them. It gets 7/10 marks which would have been an easy 8/10 if it had any brake detail. Despite these criticisms, it remains a great model of a superb car!
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