Jaguar has made its share of legendary cars, has pioneered many firsts, and has surprised drivers with its limited edition cars (only to disappoint those same drivers when they couldn’t get their hands on one). Once in a great while, the company pulls off a hat trick of sorts, as they did long ago with the Jaguar D Series racer, and more recently with the CX-75 concept car. They’re about to do it again, pulling a storied legend into the present in a strictly limited edition: the 2017 Jaguar XKSS. 

To call the original Jaguar XKSS a legend is, for all intents and purposes, to sell it short. Before the XKSS was released in 1957, the supercar as we know it didn’t exist. Derived from the legendary D-TYPE race car, it was an unqualified success on every level, from its forward-looking design to its Jaguar XK6 engine, and its performance, which left its competitors in the dust.

Beyond all that, there was another factor that built the XKSS legend: its limited production run. While produced in larger numbers than the Jaguar D-TYPE from which it was derived (of which only three were made), nine of the 25 cars were destroyed in a fire at the company’s Brown’s Lane plant in 1957.

Fast forward to 2016, and Jaguar has announced that those nine copies of the Jaguar XKSS will be, in effect, replaced. There’s no word yet on the cars’ power train or specifications, though a similar edition undertaken a few years ago when the company built six E-TYPE cars that were identical down to the last rivet suggests that the “new” XKSS will be scrupulously faithful to the original.

Did we mention that its price tag is also expected to be somewhere north of $1.5 million?

Needless to say, these cars will be spoken for very quickly, assuming they aren’t already. The odds of the 2017 Jaguar XKSS making even a cameo appearance at the Jaguar of Peabody showroom are astronomically long, and if one does, we’re not sure we’d give it back, to say nothing of selling it. For now, we’ll just look on wistfully and daydream.

Or, better still, you could come to our showroom at 247 Newbury Street in Peabody, MA. Jaguar doesn’t make the 2016 Jaguar F-TYPE or the 2016 Jaguar XJL in limited editions, but that’s not a bad thing. It means that you can schedule a test drive and take one home for yourself. And if Jaguar makes another version 60 years from now, you — or your kids — can be thankful for your foresight in buying the original.