Ford Mustang 1968 GT-390 Fastback “Bullitt” – incredible V8 sound!!

Two Highland Green Mustangs were built for the chase scene in Bullitt, and for fifty years the accepted story was that only one survived. Both turned out to be alive. This is what Ford actually put in an S-code 390 GT fastback, what Max Balchowsky changed before the cameras rolled, how fast these cars really were once the stopwatch came out, and what happened when the hero car finally crossed an auction block in 2020.

Steve McQueen did not simply appear in the most famous car chase ever filmed. He helped build the template that every action director since has been quietly copying, and the car he did it in was a nearly stock Ford. For half a century the accepted version of the story ended with one of the two Mustangs used in filming being written off and scrapped, its identity lost somewhere in the paperwork of a 1968 studio production. That version turned out to be wrong in a way almost nobody saw coming, and the correction arrived within the space of about eighteen months. What Ford actually built, what a veteran race mechanic did to it before filming, and where both cars ended up is a better story than the myth ever was.

The Chase That Rewrote the Rulebook

Bullitt reached theaters in October 1968 with a chase sequence running roughly ten minutes through the hills of San Francisco, McQueen’s Highland Green Mustang GT fastback against a black 1968 Dodge Charger R/T. There is no score under it, almost no dialogue, and very little of the cutting-for-cutting’s-sake that dominated action editing at the time. The film won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing, and the sequence is still routinely named the best car chase committed to film. Its influence is easy to trace: the handheld in-car camera work, the long unbroken takes, and the willingness to let engine noise carry the scene all became standard practice afterward.

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Two Cars and the Man Who Made Them Survive

Two 1968 Mustang GT fastbacks were purchased for the production, consecutive serial numbers, both fitted with the 390-cubic-inch V8 and four-speed manual transmissions. Max Balchowsky, a hot rod builder and racer best known for the homebuilt Old Yeller sports racers, was hired to make them survivable. He reinforced the shock towers, installed heavier springs and Koni shocks, added traction bars, reworked the brakes, and went through the engines. The cars were also stripped of their fog lights, the Pony grille badge, the Mustang lettering, and the GT emblems, then fitted with American Racing Torq Thrust wheels, which is why the on-screen car reads as anonymous rather than as a showroom promotional vehicle.

What an S-Code 390 Actually Delivered

The engine underneath was Ford’s S-code 390, an FE-family big block rated at 325 horsepower at 4,800 rpm and 427 lb-ft of torque at 3,200 rpm, fed by a four-barrel carburetor and running about 10.5 to one compression. It is worth being precise about what that produced at the strip, because the legend has inflated over the decades. Period road tests of a stock 1968 GT 390 fastback with the four-speed generally recorded quarter-mile runs in the low-to-mid fourteen-second range at trap speeds around 98 to 100 mph. Quick for a heavy street car in 1968, decidedly not a match for a 428 Cobra Jet, and nowhere near the thirteen-second claims that circulate online.

The Faster Mustang McQueen Did Not Drive

That distinction mattered even in 1968. Ford released the 428 Cobra Jet in April of that model year, an engine underrated at 335 horsepower that comprehensively outran the 390 in every measurable way, and it arrived early enough that it overlapped with the production of the cars used in filming. McQueen’s Mustang was, in other words, deliberately not the fastest Mustang Ford sold that year. The 390 GT was the sensible big-block choice, a torque-rich highway car rather than a drag strip specialist, and the modest state of tune is a large part of why both cars survived weeks of jumping San Francisco intersections at all.

Why Highland Green Keeps Coming Back

Highland Green did as much work as the drivetrain. It is a dark, almost olive green that reads nearly black under overcast light and only reveals itself in direct sun, which is exactly the effect the cinematography exploits across the chase. Ford has leaned on that color repeatedly since, releasing Bullitt special edition Mustangs in 2001, again for 2008 and 2009, and once more for 2019, each of them Highland Green with the badging stripped and the exhaust tuned to make more noise than a standard GT. The 2019 car made 480 horsepower from a 5.0-liter V8, which is a fairly direct comment on how far the formula has traveled.

The Car Found in a Mexican Junkyard

The real twist came in 2017, when the supposedly destroyed stunt car was located in a junkyard in Baja California, Mexico, where it had sat for decades after being sold off, wrecked, and forgotten. Its identity was confirmed through its VIN and the specific chassis reinforcements Balchowsky had welded in. A restoration followed. Then in 2018 the second car, the hero car McQueen drove in the close-up shots, surfaced publicly in the hands of the Kiernan family, who had bought it in 1974 and quietly kept it, unrestored and unrepainted, ever since.

3.74 Million Dollars for an Unrestored Ford

That hero car crossed the block at Mecum’s Kissimmee sale in January 2020 and sold for 3.74 million dollars including fees, at the time the most anyone had ever paid for a Mustang at public auction. It was not restored, not concours-correct, and wore fifty years of honest wear including the holes where the camera mounts had been bolted on. The price had almost nothing to do with the car as a machine and everything to do with what it was, which is a useful reminder about where value actually lives in this hobby.

Buying the Real Thing Instead of the Story

For anyone shopping the genuine article rather than the legend, a real 1968 GT 390 fastback is identifiable and reasonably attainable. The fifth VIN character should be an S for the 390 four-barrel, the GT equipment group brought fog lamps in the grille, a pop-open fuel cap, dual exhaust with quad outlets, and heavy-duty suspension, and the Marti Report service can confirm original build specifications from Ford’s own records. Tribute cars built from six-cylinder and 289 fastbacks are common and often well done, which is precisely why the documentation is worth chasing before the money changes hands.

Fifty Years Later, the Myth Finally Corrected

What makes the whole episode worth retelling is how confidently wrong the accepted version was for so long. For five decades, books, magazine features, and documentary segments repeated that one car had been destroyed and the other had vanished, and the story was tidy enough that nobody had much reason to interrogate it. Then two separate discoveries inside eighteen months rewrote it completely, both confirmed through VIN records and physical evidence rather than anecdote. It is a useful reminder that a great deal of what circulates as settled automotive history is really just repetition, and that the paperwork is usually still out there waiting for somebody to go and check.

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