Car Design as High Style, 1930-1965
Peter Harholdt
Jaguar XK-SS: 1957
The very definition of cool, this Jag was owned by Steve McQueen. A sleek, stylish roadster, the XK-SS carried over the lines of Jaguar's successful D-type racing cars of the mid-1950s but was engineered as a road car. The XK-SS included a Plexiglas windshield as well as an enlarged, padded and carpeted cockpit for the driver under a snug-fitting canvas top with a luggage rack on the trunk. Only 16 of the cars were built, and the story goes that McQueen liked to race his on the streets of L.A.
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