Car-Vid Classics: Bullitt and the world’s most famous hubcaps

Never mind Steve McQueen, let’s celebrate Bill Hickman and magic 14-inch wheels

The car chase scene in the 1968 movie Bullitt is regularly hailed as the greatest of the genre ever filmed. So much so, that to talk about it at all now seems cliched.

We all know the salient detail: the authenticity of the action, San Francisco’s geography as character in itself, lead actor Steve McQueen doing some of the driving himself. Some, but not all. The giveaway is the rear-vision mirror in the Ford Mustang GT 390 hero car: if you can see McQueen’s face, he’s driving; if not, it’s stunt driver Bud Ekins (who also jumped the bike for McQueen in The Great Escape). Oh yeah, you knew that already.

So let’s not worry about all of that. Instead, we’d like to pay homage to the other stars of the Bullitt chase: stuntman/actor Bill Hickman, that black Dodge Charger 440 Magnum R/T . . . and the world’s most famous hubcaps.

The baddie at the wheel of the Charger is also the stuntman who drove it for the action. Bill Hickman was arguably the greatest Hollywood stunt driver who ever lived, performing in everything from The Wild One to Rebel Without a Cause (he was also first on the scene at James Dean’s fatal crash in 1955) to The Love Bug to The French Connection.

The sinister black Dodge Charger is the same generation that later did comedy so well in The Dukes of Hazzard .In Bullitt, it does some amazing stuff in Hickman’s hands. But it also grows hubcaps: at least three pop off the car during the chase, only to reappear in the next scene.

Indeed, part of Bullitt’s continuing charm is those continuity glitches in the middle of incredible action and V8 noise: the same green VW Beetle everywhere, the Mustang clearly hitting a camera — and of course that botched final scene, where the Charger was supposed to plough into a service station and explode, but can clearly be seen exiting the other side of the frame.

Fun fact to finish: the “mag”look hubcaps on the Charger were an option for the R/T’s 14-inch steel wheels. Presumably the production team had bought a few extra.