Steve McQueen’s Jaguar XKSS ‘Green Rat’

McQueen paid $5,000 for the car — the equivalent of $46,000 (or £33,000) today. His then-wife, Neile Adams, signed the check.

And McQueen couldn’t get enough of his new wheels. The movie star would commonly take the ‘Green Rat’ out into the Santa Monica Mountains in the dead of night, roaring up and down Mulholland Drive on high-speed runs with his friends.

In 1959, McQueen was pulled over for speeding in Los Angeles. His wife, Neile Adams, was also in the car — six months pregnant with McQueen’s son, Chad. The actor lied to the lawmen, told them Adams was in labour — and ended up getting a police escort to the hospital. After the police left, McQueen told nurses it had been ‘a false labour’, and left. Adams, McQueen later recalled, had been ‘pissed’.

But he kept the car his entire life. McQueen died in 1980, and his prized ‘Green Rat’ was sold in 1986. Richard Freshman, a one-time Hollywood Hills neighbour of McQueen’s, bought the car for $148,000 — the equivalent of $358,000 today (or £257,000).

He tasked British-based LYNX, restorers and recreators of classic Jaguars, with fixing the car up — stipulating that McQueen’s alterations (including the locking glovebox and upholstery) remain firmly and fashionably in tact.

Today, the ‘Green Rat’ is in the carefully curated care of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles — where its old, movie star owner is fondly remembered.