Another of Sir Stirling Moss’s old cars, this time a Jaguar D-Type which the British legend raced at the 1954 24 Hours of Le Mans, is being put up for auction with an expected sale price between £5.2 million and £6.82 million.
Last week a rare, streamlined 1955 Mercedes W196, one of only four complete examples in existence, and which Moss raced at that year’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza, sold at auction for €51.15 million (£42.7 million), setting a record for a grand prix car.
The D-Type, which was assigned chassis number XKD 403 but is better known by its “OKV 2” licence plate, is not expected to fetch anything like that amount. But it is still a sought-after piece of racing history.
Moss and co-driver Peter Walker drove OKV 2 at the 1954 Le Mans 24-hour race, recording a top speed of 172.97 mph on the 3.7-mile Mulsanne Straight, a record at the time. Brake-related problems prevented the pair from finishing the race. First place went to a Ferrari 375 Plus, with another D-Type, driven by Duncan Hamilton and Tony Rolt, taking second.
D-Type Jaguars were built between 1954 and 1957, specifically targeting Le Mans. The car shared the straight-six XK engine of its C-Type predecessor but with a radically different aerodynamic package, including some aviation technology. OKV 2 has a distinctive vertical stabiliser or tail fin.
The car’s current owner, Nevada collector Dean Meiling, reunited it with Stirling Moss in 2011 and entered it in the 2012 edition of the Le Mans Classic. Meiling has also given OKV 2 a makeover, fitting street tyres, making wiring repairs to the headlights in 2020, and fully rebuilding the 3.4-litre straight-six engine in 2013.
In 2018, Meiling put OKV 2 up for auction at RM Sotheby’s Scottsdale sale, where its estimated value ranged from $12 million to $15 million. It failed to meet the reserve, after a high bid of $9.8 million. Meiling will try again at Broad Arrow’s 2025 Amelia Auction, which is taking place on March 7 and 8 at Amelia Island’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. This time the car is being offered without a reserve.
They don’t build them like they used to…
It has been interesting to note the reader reaction to recent news stories about sales of classic racing cars, from Bernie Ecclestone putting his entire 69-car collection of historic grand prix and Formula One cars up for auction late last year, to last week’s story about the W196 Mercedes, to this D-Type. Generally it has all been of a kind. A mixture of nostalgia and appreciation for beautiful engineering.
One wonders whether there will be the same appetite for current grand prix and sports cars in 70 years’ time? Probably not. Today’s cars are undeniably incredible feats of engineering and are more sophisticated than ever. And beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. Who is to say whether today’s cars will be deemed beautiful in 70 years?
What today’s cars do not have, though, and never will have, is a link to a bygone era of motor racing when enthusiasts and daredevils such as Moss went out and risked their lives on roads and circuits all over the world. It was a different world.
This D-Type is a perfect example. En route to the 1955 Portuguese Grand Prix, the Jaguar transporter apparently broke down. Tools and spare parts were loaded into OKV 2 and the car was driven the 980 miles to the race, where it finished fifth. It was then driven the 980 miles back. Today’s collectors get to be part of that history.
“Today, I can’t think of a better car to enjoy on such high-profile road rallies like the Mille Miglia retrospective or California Mille,” said Jakob Greisen, senior car specialist at Broad Arrow Auctions. “It still captures the true golden age of Jaguar racing.”
