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Toyota’s Brings New Rugged, Fast EVs to USThe Coolest Cars in Steve McQueen Movies
Steve McQueen’s love of motors sports and driving helped make movie stars of Mustangs and Porsches.
The King of Cool
When I saw the assignment of writing about the cars of Steve McQueen movies, it was a bit of a head scratcher. I’d watched 12 Years a Slave and there were zero cars in it, Hunger only had one, and Shame was decidedly not about cars either. The writing team then gently informed me I was thinking of the director Steve McQueen, not the late American actor, racecar driver, and devoted automotive enthusiast. I said, Oh, that Steve McQueen, the King of Cool, star of Papillion and The Magnificent Seven, who did his own stunt driving, and owned one of the most enviable car collections in Hollywood, right, right. Pffft, totally knew that.
Though Steve McQueen is best known in automotive circles for his films Le Mans and Bullitt, cars play a significant role in some of his other movies as well. Below we sketch what made these movies and the cars in them so cool (that is, in addition to the presence of Steven McQueen in them, of course).
1970 Porsche 917 from Le Mans
Steve McQueen didn’t just play a racecar driver in a movie, he also competed at the highest levels of racing, including notching a class win at the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1970 driving a Porsche 908. McQueen’s passion for racing inspired his interest in making a movie set at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Work began in 1969 with director John Sturges, who’d directed McQueen in The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape, with a production team scouting that year’s Le Mans race. Principle filming began the following year during the 1970 race. Despite the passion of McQueen, the film’s lack of a dedicated script or much of a plot for that matter, lead to significant strife on-set and, eventually, the departure of Sturges in favor of director Lee H. Katzin. Katzin, a racing novice, proved a better facilitator of McQueen’s vision for the film.
That vision wasn’t your typical Hollywood movie. Le Mans is unusual, artsy in fact. Which is an odd choice for the macho world of professional racing. But then, that’s what makes Le Mans such a perfect representation of McQueen himself. At once an adrenaline junky in love with going dangerously fast and a sensitive artist. There’s virtually no dialogue in Le Mans for the first 38 minutes of the film, what follows between the thinly sketched characters is there to lend real stakes to the race. In many ways, the main character of the film isn’t McQueen’s Michael Delany, but instead the event itself. Filmed on-location during the race, Le Mans gasp-inspiring camera work, the all-real engine sounds (right down to the appropriate gear), and shots of the crowd and the cars produce a sense of being there at the track that a more plot-driven film could not have achieved.
McQueen’s racecar in the film was a then new, Porsche 917. Though producers of the film didn’t know it at the outset, but the 1970 Le Mans race would be historic for Porsche racing. The new Porsche 917, developed from Porsche’ successful 908 racecar, was designed and refined with one primary goal in mind. To win at Le Mans. And win it did, Porsche’s first ever at the event. Though the 917 was only raced for a brief 2 ½ years, it became one of the most iconic liveries in racing history and in no small measure, thanks to its starring role in Steve McQueen’s Le Mans.
1962 Triumph TR6 from The Great Escape
For John Sturges’s 1963 WWII movie The Great Escape, McQueen got to rip around on a Triumph TR6 motorcycle attempting to evade Nazi troops. Though McQueen did much of the impressive riding himself, he did not perform the sequence’s famous jump over 12 feet of concertina wire.
1904 Winton Flyer from The Reivers
Based on William Faulkner Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel of the same name, The Reivers starred McQueen as Boon Hoggenbeck. Despite the literary origins, The Reivers is, at least in part, a car movie. The central plot revolves around the theft of a 1904/5 Winton Flyer and a subsequent road trip. Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of a Winton Flyer. The car company was founded back in 1896 in Cleveland, Ohio and produced automobiles through the 1920s until its sale to General Motors in 1930. Though obscure today, the Winton Flyer would have been an expensive and desirable car in rural Mississippi in the early 1900s.
For the movie, Von Dutch, the automotive artist, legendary pinstriper, and friend of McQueen’s, was commissioned to do the restoration work on the movie’s hero car. Von Dutch ensured that the car bucked and banged like a real 1904 car but could still withstand the rigors of filming. The original car would have had a two-cylinder engine making around 18-20 horsepower and a two-speed transmission.
In the film, the yellow Winton Flyer gets traded for a lame racehorse with a taste for sardines, and eventually won back by said racehorse and returned to its owner.
1968 Fastback Mustang from Bullitt
If we’re being honest, Bullitt is a run-of-the-mill, unevenly paced 1970s thriller with one legendary car chase in it. McQueen’s character, Lt. Bullitt, drives a Highland green fastback 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390 in pursuit of two hitmen in a 1968 Dodge Charger. The chase through the streets and over the hills of San Francisco is thrilling in large part because these are two (mostly) stock muscle cars being driven at their limits on city streets. The scene runs for a good ten minutes of high tension, tire burning excitement. As with many of his films, McQueen did a lot of the stunt driving himself. Of the two Bullitt Mustangs used in production sold for $3.4 million dollars, a record for a Mustang.
For more on Bullitt click here, and if you want even more of the greatest car chases of all time, check this out.
Meyers Manx Dune Buggy from The Thomas Crown Affair
It’s no secret that McQueen loved off-roading. And in Norman Jewison’s heist movie The Thomas Crown Affair, McQueen got to indulge in a bit of it behind the wheel of a Meyers Manx dune buggy. It’s clear that co-star Faye Dunaway’s screams are genuine as McQueen drives the dune buggy at its limits across dune after dune, through water, and toward a flock of sea gulls.
For more on the Meyers Manx, click here.
