The collector-car world is abuzz with news that one of the two 1968 Mustang GT fastbacks used in the filming of the 1968 Steve McQueen movie Bullitt, which was long thought to have been scrapped, has been discovered in a junkyard in Mexico.
The other of the two cars is known to be in private hands, probably in Kentucky, but the recently discovered second Mustang appears to be the one with beefed-up suspension components and other amendments made for use in the action sequences in Bullitt, which features one of the best and most iconic car-chase scenes in movie history. The two Dodge Chargers used in the movie are both believed to have been scrapped, so the find doubles the number of verified Bullitt cars extant.
According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the car was found in a scrapyard in Baja California by a man looking for vintage Mustangs that could be restored as replicas of the hero car, Eleanor, from another film, Gone in 60 Seconds. Eleanor replicas built in Paramount, California, by Ralph Garcia, Jr., use original 1967 and ?68 Mustangs to create cars that resemble the one used in the Jerry Bruckheimer remake from 2000 that starred Nicolas Cage. In the 1974 original, the Mustang was a 1971 model. Garcia?s is just one of several companies building such replicas, but it was one of his associates who identified the hulk of the nearly 50-year-old Mustang in a scrapyard as a potential Eleanor candidate, acquired it, and sent it to a Garcia facility in Mexicali. A...