Bullitt

Bullitt is a 1968 American neo-noir action thriller film directed by Peter Yates and produced by Philip D'Antoni. The picture stars Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, and Jacqueline Bisset.

On a Friday night in Chicago mobster Johnny Ross flees the Outfit. The next morning SFPD detective Lieutenant Frank Bullitt and his team, Delgetti and Stanton are tasked by Walter Chalmers with guarding Ross over the weekend, until he can be presented as a witness to a Senate subcommittee hearing on organized crime on Monday morning. The detectives are told he is in a cheap hotel on Embarcadero. Delgetti will take the first shift, then Stanton and then Bullitt. At 1am Sunday, while Stanton is phoning Bullitt to say Chalmers and a friend want to come up, Ross unchains the room door. Two hitmen burst in shooting Stanton in the leg and Ross in the neck.

While driving his Ford Mustang, Bullitt becomes aware he is being followed by a Dodge Charger driven by the two hitmen. An extended chase ensues through the streets of San Francisco to Brisbane where the Dodge crashes off the road, killing its occupants in a fiery explosion.

The Bullitt Mustang is one of the most often modelled diecasts, there are so many versions of it available, several of which are shown below, the Dodge Charger is not produced so frequently.

In 2012 on a visit to San Francisco my wife and I hired a Mustang, a new convertible, and I drove it round the streets pretending to be Steve McQueen. Only the V8 engine note was authentic - but it was a lot of fun.