Original Bullitt back on the road
At the launch of the 2019 Mustang Bullitt, I had the opportunity to meet the owner of the original Bullitt Mustang, Sean Kiernan of Nashville, Tenn.
And, with apologies to the memory of Steve McQueen, to meet the real star of that movie.
Two identical Mustangs were bought for the filming of the movie in January 1968.
Their serial numbers were/ are 8R02S125558 and 8R02S125559, usually referred to just by those last three digits, “558” and “559”.
558 was used for a lot of the jumps in the movie, and got pretty beat up during the 10 days of shooting the chase scene through the streets of San Francisco. No ramps, pyrotechnics or fakery were used; when the car careened off a hill or crashed into something like that garbage pail — not part of the plan, but they left it in anyway — that was all real.
Kiernan told me he believes that the jump car, 558, was scrapped. Another story says that it was discovered a couple of years ago in a junkyard in Mexico, although it had been heavily modified. I won’t get into that battle here; what is clear is that Kiernan’s car, 559, is the genuine article, and accounted for about 90 per cent of the chase scene. The car was surprisingly stock when used in the movie. The engine was breathed on for a bit more power, and the suspension beefed up to take the abuse. It was also deliberately hammered on to make it look like the sort of car a ‘60s San Francisco detective would drive. Frank Bullitt’s car would hardly have ever looked brand new, now would it?
It had all sorts of holes poked into it for mounting cameras; when a scene was done, the holes were just Bondo-ed over.
Steve McQueen did some of the driving in the movie, but most of it was handled by pro stunt drivers. If you check out the chase scene — and you should — you can spot the different wrist watches on the different drivers. Also, if the rear view mirror has been turned away so you can’t see the driver’s face, then it isn’t Steve behind the wheel.
After filming was completed in mid-1968, 559 was partially refettled for promotional use for the movie, which was released that October.
This may have given rise to the theory that another Bullitt Mustang had survived the filming. Or maybe that was 558. As I said, that part of the story remains a bit murky.
559 was eventually sold to a film editor who worked on the flick. His sticker for the Warner Brothers parking lot remains on the car to this day. He soon grew tired of the car. From the “life imitating art” file, it was sold to a cop named Frank — Frank Marranca, of the New York City Police Department — and was shipped east. Marranca kept it for about four years. He or possibly his wife — again, there’s some debate over this detail — put an ad in Road & Track magazine’s classifieds, with the car’s name misspelled —“Bullett.”
Kiernan’s dad, Bob Kiernan, who worked in insurance, saw the ad, called the number and made the deal. The car was the Kiernan family’s daily driver for several years. Kiernan’s mom even drove it to her teaching job, running up some 41,000 miles. In 1977, Steve McQueen tried to buy the car, but Bob wouldn’t sell. McQueen passed away three years later. By the 1980s, 559 was getting tired. It needed a clutch. Bob got interested in horses. And the car just sat. Kiernan was born in 1981, so the car has been in his family literally his entire life.
Not surprisingly, he became a car freak. He learned of the car’s history, but the family wanted to keep it a bit of a secret.
They had moved around quite a bit, eventually settling in Nashville Tenn. And the car just sat. Then in 2014, Bob passed away. At that stage, the car had been dismantled. About the only parts still attached were the doors, the dash, and the glass.
Shortly thereafter, a friend of Kiernan’s proposed an idea for a movie that sounded awfully like the previous Bullitt. Kiernan eventually confessed to him that he owned that very car. It’s a fairly convoluted story from there to here, but Kiernan decided the car should once again see the light of day.
The question facing any restorer of historic cars — how far do you go? If you rebuild the car so it’s like brand new, then is it still Frank Bullitt’s Mustang?
Triggered by the then-upcoming (and now fast approaching) 50th anniversary of the movie, Kiernan decided to take the car apart and rebuild it to as close to movie spec as he could, yet still make it a driver.
Two years later, here it is. The original shift knob and wooden steering wheel have gone walkabout. The Bondo remains.
“It was more about preservation than restoration,” Kiernan told me.
And he couldn’t be prouder. It has been on display at various venues since it was unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show this past January, with McQueen’s granddaughter sharing the stage.
Kiernan also took the car to the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England. He was grouped with a bunch of sevenfigure supercars for the runs up the hill. He couldn’t believe how the owners of the supercars all opened their doors while they sat in line waiting their turn, just so they could stare at his car. His dad’s car. Kiernan got openly emotional when he got to this part of his story. “Dad was with me when I drove that car up the hill,” he said.
“It wasn’t Steve McQueen’s car. It was my dad’s car.”