An iconic Hollywood stunt car turned up parked in a Mexican junkyard.
When director Peter Yates shot his 1968 classic action movie Bullitt, starring Steve McQueen, he used a pair of Ford Mustang GTs as stunt cars. The pair of Highland Green GTs were modified for use in the famous car chase scenes down the steep streets of San Francisco.
One of the cars was apparently destroyed while shooting the movie, while the other made its way through a few car collectors’ hands throughout the ’70s, Motor Trend reported.
At one point, McQueen even attempted to track down and buy the car in 1977. “I would very much like to keep it in the family in its original condition as it was used in the films …,” McQueen wrote in a letter at the time.
But then in 2000, a Mustang was pulled from a backyard in Mexico to be refurbished for the movie Gone in 60 Seconds. After doing a bit of research on that car’s VIN number, it turned out to be the other of the two Bullitt cars—the one long believed to have been destroyed.
As a result, the car didn’t make a second movie cameo, and the current owner plans to restore it, per Fox News.
Below, watch the car chase scene from Bullitt.
—RealClearLife
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.