The Jaguar XKE is one of the most iconic sports cars of all time. Naples resident Steve Regester owns two of them, and one comes with a whiff of high society scandal, one of the most high-profile murder cases of the last century.
The Jaguar XKE (in England, its home country, it was called the E-Type) is the automobile that no less an authority than Enzo Ferrari declared “the most beautiful car ever made.” It was ranked No. 1 in Sports Car International magazine and on the Daily Telegraph list of the 100 most beautiful cars of all time. It was the car that initiated the (fictional) drag race in the Jan and Dean song “Deadman’s Curve.”
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Steve Regester in his 1964 Jaguar XKE roadster, one of two he owns. His collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Regester's 1954 Austin-Healey 100 BN1 Roadster with its distinctive foldable windshield. Steve Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Regester's 1954 Austin-Healey bears a placard attesting to its race car modifications. Steve Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Steve Regester flicks off an invisible mote of dust. His collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Steve Regester's 1964 Jaguar XKE roadster, one of two he owns. His collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Steve Regester's 1963 Jaguar XKE. reuptedly owned by Dr. Sam Sheppard. Steve's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Steve Regester with his1963 Jaguar XKE. reuptedly owned by Dr. Sam Sheppard. Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Steve Regester in his 1964 Jaguar XKE roadster, one of two he owns. His collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Regester's 1954 Austin-Healey 100 BN1 Roadster with its distinctive foldable windshield. Steve Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Steve Regester's 1964 Jaguar XKE roadster, one of two he owns. His collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Regester's 1954 Austin-Healey bears a placard attesting to its race car modifications. Steve Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Steve Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Steve Regester drives his1963 Jaguar XKE. reuptedly owned by Dr. Sam Sheppard. Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Steve Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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The dash of Steve Regester's 1963 Jaguar XKE. reuptedly owned by Dr. Sam Sheppard. Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Steve Regester's 1963 Jaguar XKE. reuptedly owned by Dr. Sam Sheppard. Steve's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
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Steve Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York has just six automobiles in its collection; one is the 1963 XKE. And a 1963 Jaguar XKE roadster in opalescent silver blue metallic with red leather interior and all the original trimmings is parked in Steve’s Naples garage, making him the instant envy of car buffs everywhere.
Steve’s ’63 Jag has all matching numbers, a blue soft top and matching hardtop, he says, with everything original including the toolkit, jack AM radio, and the owner’s operating manual. That manual is where the scandal comes in. It is signed by Dr. Sam Sheppard, who stood trial two times for the murder of his wife and was the inspiration for the television show and movie “The Fugitive.”
Sheppard, who was acquitted at his second trial and apparently drank himself to death afterward, was the reputed owner of the silver-blue XKE, although Steve says he has been unable to come up with definitive documentation to verify the story.
Like Steve’s other historic sportscars, the ’63 looks as good as the day it rolled out of the factory, maybe better, after a “rotisserie restoration,” in which the vehicle is completely disassembled and the body taken off the frame. The stripped skeleton is then placed on a rotisserie, which can be turned to expose any aspect of the car.
“I had the car rotisserie restored. It was stripped to bare metal,” Steve says. “Every nut and bolt was removed. This restoration took 2 3/4 years to complete.”
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Steve Regester with his1963 Jaguar XKE. reuptedly owned by Dr. Sam Sheppard. Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
But Steve still wasn’t satisfied. After driving the car, he turned it over to renowned restorer Keith Pershing at Island Automotive on Marco Island (featured in Grandeur’s February 2020 issue) and spent an additional $23,000 to get it back to showroom form. Jaguars including the XKE have “a challenging history,” says Steve, a reputation for being temperamental and spending a lot of time — and money — in the shop, but his efforts still would appear a bit extreme.
It seems to work for Steve, though. He went through the exact same sequence with his ruby red 1964 XKE.
“It hadn’t been driven — it was a single-owner car. It was hard to start, had no brakes, made all kinds of noises, really didn’t run well,” says Steve, in what is something of a reverse sales pitch. “I duplicated what I did on the blue one, and now it’s a dream car.”
Both XKEs share the same specs, each with a 3.8-liter double overhead cam, triple SU carburetors and four-on-the-floor, developing 275 horsepower and capable of 150 mph. Steve says he takes that on faith, and personally has never had the cars over 110. His blue XKE won first place in the Jaguar Clubs of North America in 2019 in the “driven” class.
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Steve Regester in his 1964 Jaguar XKE roadster, one of two he owns. His collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
In any event, he is keeping the red ’64 XKE and looking to sell the silver-blue ’63 — the Sam Sheppard car. He must sell one, he says, because he has only a three-car garage, and he will soon take delivery of his newest baby, a 1960 Porsche 356 Roadster he has had undergoing restoration for the past three years. So something had to go.
Steve and his wife’s daily drivers — matching modern-day Audis, an A8L for him and an A3 2.0T quattro for her — are already banished to live out in the elements, and the new/old Porsche will certainly rate a berth in the garage.
So what could Steve prize highly enough to deal away the head-turning, gorgeous, car-with-a-mysterious-past Jaguar? Meet his 1954 Austin-Healey 100 BN1 roadster. If anything, it is even more of a head-turner than the E-Type, also in fire-engine red, and especially with its windscreen lowered, which is the way Steve leaves it.
All these cars are great conversation starters, and a surefire way to draw ladies and car enthusiasts. With the Austin parked alongside a quiet street for a photograph, Steve is stopped by several passersby with questions, knowledgeable comments, and even a request to bring the car to a photo shoot “with lots of beautiful bridesmaids” that weekend.
“I drive these cars all the time,” Steve says, and often he finds himself engaged in conversation about them. “They stop people and turn heads all the time.”
What he doesn’t do is drive them in the rain, if he can help it all, which can be a challenge for anyone living in Southwest Florida, particularly the summer months.
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The maker's nameplate on Regester's 1954 Austin-Healey 100 BN1 Roadster. Steve Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
“If it rains, I don’t use the windshield wipers. I don’t want anything to break,” he says.
On the Austin, he has gone further — the wipers are removed, which you have to do to lower the windshield — and stashed away in the car.
The BN1 has a heritage of some more aggressive driving though. Built to contest the Le Mans Grand National road racing circuit when the company started in 1953, just one year before Steve’s car was made, the two-seater with original matching numbers has a 2,660-cc inline four-cylinder engine with twin SU carbs and produces about 110 horsepower. Steve’s Austin-Healey had the Le Mans modification kit added at Healey’s Cape Warwick facility in England, and a plaque on the dash attests to the upgrade.
Much of its speed and agility, like the XKE, comes from the car’s diminutive size and lightweight construction. Getting in and out takes a modicum of agility and feels more like climbing into the cockpit of a fighter plane than the typical experience of hopping into a car.
Like the 1964 XKE Steve intends to keep, and like the Porsche roadster that is on the way, the Austin-Healey is cherry red, so once he makes the swap, Steve will have a garage full of scarlet fillies. He does his own detailing work, and keeps all his cars spotless, bending over during a photographer’s visit to whisk off an invisible, or imaginary, speck of dust on the “boot” (they are British, after all) of one of the cars.
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Regester's 1954 Austin-Healey 100 BN1 Roadster with its distinctive foldable windshield. Steve Regester's collection of automobiles leans towards British motorcars.
The funds to finance Steve’s obsession with “British Invasion” motorcars come from his company, Prevent-Plus LLC, where he is co-founder of a bio-medical firm that develops technology to prevent skin infections and promote healing without antibiotics.
Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, Steve caught the English sports car bug early, when his veterinarian father owned a succession of Triumph TR3s and TR4s. He had a souped-up Mustang in high school, a Datsun 240-Z, and an MG-B. Over the years, he says, he has owned “10 or 11 XK’s,” plus a variety of other cars including a 1915 Cadillac.
Nothing in modern medicine seems likely to cure him of a serious case of the British Invasion.