Ford revives ‘Bullitt’ Mustang

The original Bullitt – where is it now?

Ford also took the original hero car alongside the new car on stage in the 2018 Detroit Auto Show.

Warner Bros. bought two units of the Mustang for the movie – one of them was used for the jump shots in the movie, while the other was driven by McQueen himself. While the former went to a salvage yard and resurfaced in California last year, the latter was sold to a Warner Bros. employee named Robert Ross and in 1970, he sold it to a private detective for $6,000, equalling to about $24,000 today.

That same detective sold it to an insurance executive named Robert Kiernan for the same amount of money, and made it his daily driver. McQueen tried to buy back the movie car from Kiernan, wanting to keep the car in the same condition as it and equipment.

Kiernan kept the car hidden up until 2001, and he and his son Sean started restoring it in its original condition. After Rob it in 2016, where he showed it to McQueen’s granddaughter stage in the Detroit Motor Show this year.

“You know, it was never our intention to keep this car a secret from everybody. It just kind of happened with life. I’m just completely buzzing to join with Ford and the new Bullitt and show this car to the world on one of the biggest stages there is,” Sean said in a Ford statement.