nifticus posted a couple of shots of one of the two genuine Bullitt Mustangs. It’s an icon, but I have to admit I haven’t seen what these look like nowadays. Nice; just the way I like my cars.
It’s at the Le May – America’s Car Museum, in Tacoma, WA. Meaning just a few hours north of Eugene. A trip there is long overdue.
Love those original Firestone high performance tires.
Iconic car.
and yet the Dodge Charger was so much more impressive – according to the filmmaker – the Mustang was really outclassed.
Very nice, it was well used and enjoyed from what I’ve read. It’s cool people can go see it at a museum now, but still kind of sad that its road going days are for the most part over.
Very nice. I found the movie unwatchable (other than the car chase) but always liked the dark green fastback with mag rims.
Which movie car is this? The one that was found in Mexico or the one that Steve McQueen tried to buy back?
I’d want to put it back on the road and enjoy it, but I could probably build a nice driving replica for one percent of this one’s market value.
“Which movie car is this? The one that was found in Mexico or the one that Steve McQueen tried to buy back?”
I think they covered this on an episode of Jay Leno’s Garage, Doug.
IIRC, it’s the one that Steve McQueen wanted to buy back. I seem to remember the owner showing the letter from the actor after he tracked the car down. I want to say the owner had the car in New York or New Jersey, but it’s been some time since I saw that episode.
I do recall that the owner was all about keeping the car all original and enjoying it, however.
Yes- As found, the patina on the Mexican car was quite a bit more advanced…
The car has since been restored, but it took a year or more to get it back into driveable condition.
That guy caught a lot of flack from so-called enthusiasts over the years for not selling it, which always bugged me. Here’s a guy who seemingly did hold onto a car for reasons independent of investment, which is what I thought this hobby was all about? And seeing it now, while weathered, reports of “that jerk letting it rott away” appear to be greatly exaggerated. If Ford restores it from this state they’re doing a far greater disservice to its history than that guy did doing nothing.
The Mexico car was the interesting one to me. All reports were that it was scrapped after the movie was completed. It clearly lived a hard life and lost its highland green paint and parts at some point, but even still with reports of that being the main stunt car, THAT’s the shell we the viewers were probably most in awe of watching. I joined a classic Mustang forum just to follow the thread on it, culminating with a video of Kevin Marti confirming the legit VIN and tags with a mariachi band tooting in the background. It’s a shame the full story of that car got quenched when this one surfaced, unless I missed it.
IIRC it’s still in the hands of the owner’s son or family. It was ‘exhumed’ for the recent launch of a new gen Mustang, and I suspect it has just been lent to the museum and not actually sold back to Ford.
My favorite Mustang, i love this body style and of course the icon that is the Bullit.
You never hear anything about the black Dodge Charger(s) that were used in the film. I think they are every bit as iconic as this Mustang.
Hi Evil Ron. Evil Frank also drove a black ’68 Charger. This is it.
Is that Frank Booth’s Charger, when he takes the neighbor for a joyride?
Certainly, visiting Suave Ben…
One of my favorite movies of all time.
Yeah, count me as another fan of the Charger. The movie left me with the impression while Steve McQueen’s character happened to be driving a nice Mustang, Professionals who hunted people down to kill them used black 383 Dodge Chargers as the vehicle of choice.
Minor nitpick: the Charger was an R/T with a 440. Perhaps if it had been a 383, Bullitt might have actually been able to keep up with it.
This could be the remaining Bullitt Charger: https://www.carlylemotors.com/vehicle-details/1968-dodge-charger-r-t-440–bullitt-charger–coupe-eb9cd4a309244e4193d64ac1ba3ee3ec
Bob
More on the Charger: https://jimsgarage.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/the-missing-bullitt-charger/
The mustang had no problems keeping up with the charger, watch the track clips with both cars. The mustang was actually quicker than the charger.
Mrs. JPC and I just watched this movie about a week and a half ago. The CC Effect is in fine tune.
The car chase is indeed fabulous. Getting a load of the hospital scenes is one more way to feel really old. You could really get treated for stuff in places that looked like that?
I love how every once in awhile Ford comes out with some Bullitt Edition sporting some limited edition dark green color. This car was, of course, the same dark green seen on a bazillion 1968 Fords and Mercuries. Fun fact, it was a 1968-only color. Ford should try to re-create it in a modern finish. I think the world is ready.
Second Fun Fact: Ford used six separate and distinct shades of dark green in the years 1966-71, a new one each year.
I know there were two, but this isn’t the one in the iconic chase scene. First thing I noticed was the front bumper didn’t have a slight warp to it (a little off center on driver side), which I always recalled from the movie, and Bullitt’s car did not have rocker panel moldings.
Maybe this is the genuine article, perhaps the moldings and bumper were replaced, perhaps it’s the secondary car. I doubt it.
Yeah, the hulk found rotting in Mexico is the chase car. And, from the looks of that previously posted picture, the only remaining thing of any value was likely the VIN tag.
The one at the museum looks to be the one the reclusive hoarder used as a daily-driver in Kentucky. As one might imagine, it only resurfaced after he died.
And I’d venture to guess it’s authentic, too, since it looks to still have the camera mounts underneath the doors. That’s a detail unlikely to be added by anyone trying to make a copy. But that front bumper does look like it’s in way too good of a condition to be the original.
Another minor deviation from the chase car is the outside rearview mirror; the chase car’s mirror was round. This one has the OEM Ford rectangular mirror.
I think the rocker moldings were there in the movie but painted over black or possibly green like a few other chrome parts like the taillight bezels. I could be mistakin but I’m fairly certain they came standard on GTs, which one of the cars is. The other car may not have had them as a non-GT so they may have painted them so both match?
There were a bunch of dents on the cars in the movie (before the chase!)that don’t seem to be present, so it may have been cleaned up and even repainted after it was sold by the studio.
McQueen himself supposedly put the dent in the driver’s side front fender to make the car look beat-up. Then they switched out the wheels/tires for the Blue Streaks and Torque Thrusts for performance purposes.
The blackout treatment of the two cars was something I was always curious about. One of the most obvious blackouts besides the taillight bezels was of the gas cap.
Which all leads to the question of “Why?”. Personally, I thought the best explanation was that the two Mustangs they got from Ford, while both Highland Green fastbacks, weren’t both GTs and might not even have had the same engine/transmission. So all the dechroming was simply to make them look identical. But, supposedly, there’s documentation that shows the production company did, indeed, get two identical Mustang GTs.
Again, maybe it was just McQueen wanting the Mustangs to not look like they were new, uplevel trim cars and the blackout stuff was just part of that.
I could be misremembering what I read but I thought the Mexico car wasn’t a GT?
If that isn’t the case it’s still curious, beyond the blackout treatment the trim and corral were removed from the grille and the fender emblems weren’t present in the movie either. That Mustang was entirely debadged in a way you see cars used in TV commercials, which is pretty odd for a movie Ford supplied cars to.
Here’s a good pic where you can see the paint chipping from the chrome side moldings below the door
Well, like I said, to me, one car originally being a GT, and the other not, would be the most logical rationale as to all the blackout and debadging, simply to make the two cars look alike, down to the wheels and tires having been different from the factory. I always assumed that was why the grille was cleared of all ornamentation since a GT would have had foglights and a non-GT would not have.
But, conversely, McQueen did put that big dent in the fender of the car, simply to make it look street-worn. And then there’s the engine work done to the Mustang to try and make it fast enough to keep up with the Charger. From what I recall, the only things done to the Charger was magnaflux front end components to check for cracks to ensure safety on the jumps, and putting on smaller tires to try and handicap it around corners to slow it down. So, who knows?
CC effect here too. I was just showing my son the Bullitt chase scene for the first time on the weekend. He loved it! The chase scene is great and I thought the movie was great too.
There are so many things that become cliche and feel overrated through their accolades…. The Bullitt chase is not one of those things.
I get a little weary of the claims that the rest of the movie isn’t good. The chase works as well as it does because of the rather slow paced procedural buildup to it. If you want a fast paced action flick with a cool car chase and a vaguely similar plot(protecting a witness from assanation), watch Stallone’s Cobra from 1986 in its cheeseball machismo glory(I actually love this film, but I embrace the campiness). Bullitt is an outrageous chase scene, its stunts and practical effects are realistic(ok minus the 18 speed double clutch shifts and 7 Charger hubcaps flying off) but the scenario of two cars flying through downtown San Francisco for 15 minutes without one other police car joining in the mix, not to mention the disconnected route? You notice the flaws more if all you do is watch the chase on YouTube, but if you watch it with the full climatic buildup and scenes following, you never think about any of the flaws. Most car chase movies suffer as movies specifically because of this, and never truly top bullitt. William Friedkin came the closest with both the French Connection and To live and Die in LA though.
True, although the rest of the film still feels late-60s dated against the ‘realism’ of the entirety of The French Connection.
Peter Yates was apparently chosen for Bullitt on the basis of his UK film ‘Robbery’. Not quite as dynamic as Bullitt, but certainly not shot in studio against a projection screen as was still the norm back then.
thanks for posting!
The problem with the movie is it’s a bit ‘too’ realistic. I once read that police work could be described as long periods of stifling boredom, punctuated by moments of stark terror. And that’s actually a good description of Bullitt.
But, yeah, the lines are mostly laughable. One particular scene that never fails to get a chuckle is when one of the hitmen is at the hospital asking a doctor the room of their victim and repeats the word “doctor” three times in three sentences.
I think Bullitt was a good movie with a good chase scene. It captured that gritty undertone that the late 1960’s had.
The movie that I think had a great chase scene but the rest of the movie was forgettable was 1985’s To Live and Die in LA.
I think to live and die in LA was a great movie all around, the whole reason the chase happens and the aftermath of it is one of the most interesting plot lines I’ve seen in a movie. It is admittedly dated between the Wang Chung soundtrack and certain lines of dialogue, but I never found it forgettable.
Auto chase scenes that are actually integral to the plot tend to come off much better. Besides To Live and Die in LA and The French Connection, there’s Ronin. One of my favorite touches in the latter was the extensive use of the headlights for ‘flash-to-pass’, something that is much more European than in the US.
When I first saw the movie I didn’t yet live in the Bay Area although all that shifting bugged the hell out of me. Then our family moved to the Bay Area as my father’s new job was in the Ferry Building. In my boredom, couldn’t wait for SDSU to reopen, I drove the City at night. I learned my way all around that town from the Marina down to Hunter’s Point in 1972. Did the same in Oakland at night. People would say “you drove where!” and lived.
I also learned that the Bullitt chase scene was filmed all over the City in very disconnected bits. In 1990 I set out to drive the route that was driveable starting from where the chase originated. We all drove Mustangs that day. Can’t do it today as the traffic is Horrendous.
The first time I saw Bullitt was in the theater when it was first released. I almost got sick watching the chase scene and I am one who has never been car sick in my life. A couple of years later I watched it at a drive-in through the windshield of my ’67 Mustang that had the same color interior as Bullitt’s car. Interesting point of view.
In my opinion it is still the best car chase in any movie. Newer films with CG aided car chases look fake by comparison. I also think it is a pretty good detective yarn. The cast was very good and made it very believable. Personally I enjoyed the chase through the hospital too. My career was in fire code inspection and I have spent many long hours in hospital basements checking out all the systems. It was like ” Hey, I’ve been here before.”
I agree it’s a good detective yarn. Lots of people pan it as a movie but I thinks it’s a good flick of its era, well acted, shot and edited. TCM ran it two weekends ago and of course I DVR’ed it and enjoyed watching it for the umpteenth time.
Besides the seminal car chase, I also love the airport chase scene of Frank Bullitt pursuing the bad guy across SFO’s taxiways and runways at night while dodging screaming PSA 727s and Pan Am 707s taking off at full power. And then there’s Jacqueline Bisset in her prime acting years…what’s not to like about THAT?!
I have the DVD and the comments by director Peter Yates are interesting. It was all shot on location except for the office scene in Chicago at the very first. Maybe that is why so much of it looks realistic. All the hospital personnel except for the surgeon were actual hospital employees.
IIRC, they tried, and were denied, permission to film part of the chase over the Golden Gate bridge (imagine how that would have played out). As it was, it’s claimed that San Francisco was not particularly thrilled with the chase, anyway. And neither was Warner Bros. since the cost of filming on location was prohibitively high. And, yet, it’s turned out to be one of the most iconic movies of the sixties.
To this day, Bullitt, even without the chase scene, really exemplifies the ‘feel’ of San Francisco. The really great location movies can do this (another example is The Blues Brothers and Chicago).
That is true about the Golden Gate Bridge and you can catch a glimpse of it in one of the scenes.
I’ve never been to San Francisco but I can certainly see what you mean by capturing the feel because I can pick that up too. I agree about the Blues Brothers and Chicago. Another film that does that is The Fugitive.
Once I was watching some B grade spy movie on TV that was set in an unnamed city that looked vaguely familiar. Then I realized that what I was looking at was Indianapolis where I was headquartered in my job at the time and had once lived.