Jaguar so rare it roared up £2m in a year

It is described as “the coolest car in the world”, shooting up in value even faster than the mansions that surround it in the heart of Mayfair.

A rare Jaguar XKSS — one of 16 surviving examples — has been given pride of place in the newly opened Mount Street showroom of specialist restorers JD Classics near the Connaught hotel.

Its value — estimated at $17 million, or £11.5 million — has risen 20 per cent over the past year, adding almost £2 million to its price tag.

The prime central London property market, by contrast, has gone up at a relatively modest pace of around 5 per cent over the same period.

The 3.4 litre engined car’s value was enhanced last summer when it won a “best in class” in the postwar sports category at the Quail Lodge competition in Pebble Beach, California.

But Anthony Wenyon, chief executive of Essex-based JD Classics, said the ever-increasing value — as well as the company’s emotional attachment to the most expensive British-made road car in the world — made it hard to sell.

“The last time we did get an offer there was a little tear in the eye of Derek Hood (the company’s owner),” he added.

The XKSS, made in Coventry in 1957, has spent much of its life rusting in a Cuban pound after an accident during a supercar race on the island. It was later held by the Castro regime. JD Classics bought the Jaguar in 2010 and spent four years restoring it.