Steve McQueen's 'Bullitt' Mustang found in Mexico junk yard

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Steve McQueen's 'Bullitt' Mustang found in Mexico junk yard

 

 

Frank Bullitt couldn’t have done a better job cracking this case.

 

Nearly 50 years after it was last seen, a 1968 Ford Mustang found in a Mexican junkyard has been confirmed to be one of two known to have been used in the filming of the Steve McQueen movie “Bullitt.”

 

“I’m 100 percent sure it’s authentic,” classic Ford expert Kevin Marti told Fox News after travelling across the border to Mexicali to inspect the car last week. Kevin Marti of Marti Auto Works in El Mirage, Ariz., is one of the world’s top experts on classic Fords and owns the exclusive license to the production records of every car the company built from 1967 to 2012.

 

there were actually two Mustangs used during filming: one kept neat and tidy and another that did most of the dirty work during the movie’s groundbreaking chase scene. The pampered star car was preserved and sold three times over the years and is very privately owned today, while the stunt car was beaten up so badly by the end of production that it was sent to the wrecking yard.

 

The car was discovered last year in Baja California Sur by a man named Hugo Sanchez, its then-white body rotting away and its original drivetrain long gone. Hollywood legend had it that the car, which was the film's primary stunt car, had been sent to the junkyard shortly after filming was complete, but a couple of layers of paint sprayed on top of its iconic Highland Green suggest that it had lived several lives before finally ending up in one.

 

The Peter Yates-directed Bullitt starred McQueen alongside Robert Vaughn and Jacqueline Bisset. Many consider the film's chase sequence to be one of the greatest committed to celluloid.