The McQueen Jaguar XKSS is a 1956 road car built from Jaguar’s D-Type racer, and it is one of only 16 XKSS roadsters. Steve McQueen drove it hard, painted it green and then sold it to casino owner Bill Harrah. Later he bought it back, and he kept it until he died in 1980.

That buy-back is the part of the story people tend to skip. Selling a car is common. Paying to get the same car home again says much more about how its owner felt.

Today the car belongs to the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. As a result, its history comes from a museum record rather than a sales brochure, and that record is unusually detailed.

What the XKSS was

Jaguar built the XKSS as a road-going version of the D-Type racing car. According to the Petersen Automotive Museum, McQueen’s car uses a 3.4-liter Jaguar XK inline-six rated at 250 bhp, with a top speed of about 150 mph. The museum also notes that only 16 XKSS cars were built.

Where did the cars come from? Jaguar pulled out of racing at the end of 1956 and had partly built D-Types left at its Browns Lane factory. The Wikipedia entry on the XKSS explains that Sir William Lyons chose to convert some of them for road use.

The Coventry Racers register lists McQueen’s car as XKSS 713, built on D-Type chassis XKD 569. In other words, this car began life as a racer and finished it as a road car.

How the McQueen Jaguar XKSS reached him

McQueen was not the first owner. The Petersen lists James Edward Peterson, a designer of Riverside Raceway, as the original buyer. After that, television personality Bill Leyden owned it.

McQueen bought the car in 1958 for a reported $5,000, according to The Globe and Mail. At the time it was white with a red interior. He did not leave it that way for long.

First, he had the body repainted green and the Dunlop wheels polished, the Petersen says. Then he had upholsterer Tony Nancy retrim the cabin in black. Hot rod artist Von Dutch also fitted a special glove box door, which the car still carries.

Wikipedia, citing Matt Stone’s book McQueen’s Machines, says McQueen called the car the “Green Rat.” The museum’s own write-up simply calls the color green, so the nickname rests on that book.

Driving it like he meant it

McQueen used the car on public roads, and he used it fast. In fact, the Petersen says he collected so many tickets in his first year that his license was nearly suspended twice. The Globe and Mail tells the same story, saying he almost lost his licence.

He also worked on it himself. The museum describes McQueen as a capable mechanic who did much of the car’s maintenance. Even so, he stopped racing it, because he considered it too rare and valuable to risk.

The figures explain why the car suited him. The Globe and Mail reports that an XKSS could reach 60 mph in 5.2 seconds. For a car from 1956, that was serious pace on a city street.

Selling to Harrah, then buying it back

McQueen sold the XKSS to collector Bill Harrah in the early 1970s, according to both the Petersen and The Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail places the car in the Bill Harrah collection in Reno. For a while, then, the green Jaguar lived in Nevada instead of in McQueen’s garage.

However, the separation did not last. The Petersen says McQueen later reacquired the car and kept it until his death from cancer in 1980. The Globe and Mail likewise says he bought it back “some time later.”

Sources disagree on the exact dates of the sale and the buy-back. Notes on the Coventry Racers register put the sale as early as 1969 and the return in 1977 or 1978. For that reason, this story uses the museum’s wording rather than picking a year.

What is clear is the shape of the story. He had owned the car for more than a decade, let it go, and then wanted it back badly enough to pay for it again.

Where the McQueen XKSS is now

After McQueen’s death, a local collector bought the car at auction in 1984, the Petersen says. That owner refurbished it while keeping its low mileage and features such as the Von Dutch glove box door.

Since then, the car has joined the Petersen’s collection. The museum showed it in its “Splendor and Speed” exhibit, and it now lists the car in The Vault.

So the green paint, the black Tony Nancy interior and the Von Dutch glove box all survive together. Anyone who wants to see the McQueen Jaguar XKSS can find it at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, one of the 16 XKSS cars Jaguar built.

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This article was created with the help of AI and was reviewed and edited by Fast Lane Only editors before publication.