Ricardo Montalbán's Coachbuilt Jaguar XK140 Is A Real Italian Beauty, Lacks Rich Corinthian Leather

Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Ghia made some of the most beautiful and delicate rolling sculptures in the world. With decades of experience, the company could effectively turn even the most boring vehicles into a gorgeous work of art. The company really found its design stride in the 1950s, and this little Jaguar coupe is as much proof of that as anything. Built on what was one of the fastest cars of its time, the iconic XK140, this aluminum lightweight body brings an intrinsically Italian look to the British engineering marvel. 

As the successor to Jag's XK120, the 140 saw some serious performance upgrades, but largely carried the same swoopy drooping design. Some like the Jaguar body look, but it's certainly not my flavor of tea. In addition to a larger and more powerful 3.4-liter inline six engine, the 140 got better brakes, a rack and pinion steering system, and traditional "telescopic" shock absorbers instead of antiquated lever arms. This particular car, being an SE model, means it received further improvements in the form of a C-type motorsport cylinder head, a pair of carburetors, heavier duty torsion bars, and twin exhaust pipes for a 20 pony boost to 210 horsepower. 

A bone stock XK140 SE was tested by Road & Track in 1955, recording a top speed of 120 miles per hour, with an 8.4-second zero-to-60 time and a 16.6-second quarter-mile time. That feels very slow in 2026, but back seventy years ago it was an absolute monster. Keep in mind that when this car was built, Jaguar was absolutely running the table at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, having won overall in 1951, 1953, 1955, 1956, and 1957. When you bought an XK140, you were buying a winning pedigree. 

This was like the Corvette ZR1X of the 1950s, pushing the boundaries of speed. It was fast in a time when everything on the road was lazy and lethargic. Most cars on the road could barely maintain half the speed that this Jag was capable of. 

Jaguar allegedly provided just ten XK140 chassis to coachbuilders for custom bodywork treatment. There aren't proper records of where each went, but scholars of the brand believe no more than four of these tailfinned Jags by Ghia have ever existed. This particular example, number S815404, was delivered to Ghia as a bare rolling chassis, and everything was built up around it from scratch. West Coast Jag distributor Charles Hornburg special-ordered this car for his client R.W. Martin of La Jolla, California. 

With a narrow inline engine and minimalist chassis structure, the XK140 was a wonderful model to begin with for coachbuilding, as Ghia could pretty much do whatever it wanted from a design standpoint. The long engine made for a lengthy hood and rearset passenger compartment, already defining the look as sporty to the contemporary eye. 

Ghia technical director Giovanni Savonuzzi was heavily influenced by the design school of Chrysler's design chief at the time, Virgil Exner, and jet-age-style tail fins were a common addition to his work. I'll be honest, I think the Jaguar works better with them. They're a great addition, and allegedly the fins were actually functional for stability at the high speeds of which this sports car was capable. 

This would have been designed around the same time as the Dual-Ghia American-Italian luxury convertible, and you can see some of that design influence bleed into the Jaguar, particularly at the front of the car. The wide gaping maw of a grille, arrow-straight topline, and low roof are practically staples of the Ghia lookbook. It's an attractive look on the large Dodge-based Dual-Ghia, but it's downright gorgeous in miniature on the Jag. I'd say this is a spectacular look, if you were to ask me. 

Allegedly, the Jag was purchased by Hollywood hunk Ricardo Montalbán about a decade after the car's creation. The Mexican-born actor fell in love with acting when he moved to New York City as a teen, and when his mother fell ill, he moved back to Mexico, where he quickly became a film star in the 1940s and signed with MGM Studios for several years. By 1965 he'd been in basically every television show and movie, and decided to tour a stage production of "The King and I" and used some of his signing money to purchase the Jag. Famed car customizer George Barris apparently did some work on the car for Montalbán. 

While Montalbán is best known today for his roles on Fantasy Island in the late 1970s and his portrayal of the titular Khan in "Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan," he was a prolific working Hollywood actor for decades. According to retellings from Barris, Montalbán was ecstatic that the Jaguar was something nobody else could have. It was perhaps as unique as he was himself. 

If you are the kind of person who would like a Jaguar that nobody else can have, this is your chance to own the Jaguar XK140 SE with body by Ghia. The red-over-tan beauty will be coming up for auction at Mecum's Indianapolis auction next month. It's being offered with no reserve, and no pre-auction estimate, because nobody on earth knows what this thing could possibly be worth. There are basically no comps for a sale like this. It's got about 60,000 miles on the odometer and was, until recently, maintained by the Blackhawk Collection museum in Danville, California. If the photos are any indication of the state of this car, it looks impeccable. If you have a bunch of spare money and you want to turn it into a rare Italian-bodied Jaguar, get yourself to Indianapolis on May 16th and get a bidder paddle.