Jaguar D-Type No Reserve at Broad Arrow Auctions

Jaguar D-Type Offered with No Reserve

The Jaguar D-Type, produced from 1954 to 1957, was a revolutionary race car that dominated endurance racing, most notably winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times (1955, 1956, and 1957). Designed by Malcolm Sayer, it featured an aerodynamic monocoque chassis, a radical departure from traditional ladder-frame designs, improving both strength and weight reduction.

Powered by a 3.4-liter (later 3.8-liter) XK inline-six engine, the D-Type was capable of speeds over 170 mph (273 km/h). Its distinctive tail fin and sleek, low-profile body helped reduce aerodynamic drag and increase stability at high speeds. Jaguar employed aircraft-inspired engineering, including disc brakes, which gave the D-Type a competitive edge in endurance racing.

Despite being retired from factory racing after 1956, Jaguar’s privateer teams continued to race and win with the D-Type. In 1957, it secured a historic 1-2-3-4-6 finish at Le Mans, solidifying its status as one of the greatest endurance race cars of all time. Today, the D-Type remains an icon of motorsport history, a reminder of a time when Jaguar dominated the race track with cars that could be driven to the grocery store one weekend, then in anger on track the next.

This specific D-Type, OKV 2, has a remarkable racing pedigree just on its own, having been driven by Sir Stirling Moss and Peter Walker at the 1954 24 Hours of Le Mans, setting a record speed of 172.97 mph on the Mulsanne Straight. Although it failed to finish the race, that was only the beginning of its time on track proving to be a very successful car through the 1958 racing season.

It was returned to the Jaguar factory following a crash and was rebuilt in period by the same team that built it before it first left the factory and it still wears the same sheet metal from that rebuild today.

OKV 2 has a very well-documented history of ownership and represents a chance for anyone in the market for a D-Type to place a bid, knowing that this car will be sold as it’s hitting the auction block with no reserve.

No Reserve on a D-Type?

We spoke with Jakob Greisen at Broad Arrow Auctions about this car and the reason it’s being sold without a reserve. We should note that to the best of our knowledge this is the first time a D-Type has been offered at auction without reserve.

Because of how few D-Types Jaguar built it’s difficult to value this car, or really any D-Type as we’ve seen in recent years. But that’s a big factor in this being offered with no reserve at their Amelia Island auction – according to Jakob, “It’s the best marketing you can do for your car.”

It will certainly bring everyone out of the woodwork without any chance of holding back in case of an unreasonable reserve as we’ve seen on some other D-Types in the past several years.

Recent D-Type Auction Results

In fact, this exact car was offered at auction in 2018 with an estimate of $12 – $15 million, but it failed to sell with a high bid around $9.8 million. Another D-Type was offered by another auction house that same year but also failed to sell, in that case with a high bid of $8.85 million.

More recently a different D-Type was sold for $6 million in Scottsdale in 2021, but since that we’ve seen them come close but not hit what the consignors felt they were worth. In 2022 Jim Taylor’s D-Type was offered at the Passion for the Drive auction but bidding closed around $7.25 million.

The most recent D-Type to hit the auction block that we’re aware of was in 2023 and bidding on that example reached just $3.6 million, but that car certainly lacked the competition history and originality of OKV 2.

Expectations for OKV 2

Broad Arrow’s estimate for this car is $6.5 to $8.5 million which seems like a reasonable range to us factoring in the close ties this car had with the factory and how well its history has been documented since it was new. Obviously that’s a fair bit less than the estimates that we witnessed around 2018, but that reflects a more general softening of the market for cars from the 1950s.

Taking everything about this car into consideration along with our discussions with Broad Arrow Auctions, we expect this will sell with a final bid around $7.25 million when it crosses the block at Amelia Island.

Before we get to witness OKV 2 sell in Florida, Broad Arrow Auctions will hold the Academy of Art University Collection sale on February 15 in San Francisco. We looked at some of the offerings at their next auction and think it will be enough to hold us over until the weekend of March 8.

But we know this much – we will be imagining being behind the wheel of this D-Type until the moment it rolls on the block. To quote Jakob Greisen again, “Once you sit in that seat and fire up that engine, once you get on the open road, it’s like nothing else.”