Did the Ford Mustang GT 390 Fastback really whip the Dodge Charger 440 in
Hollywood’s most famous car chase of all time? Or was this epic battle between two of
America’s legendary muscle cars a fix?
These are some of the questions that have been hotly debated by car enthusiasts since the debut of the 1968 film Bullitt, which featured a Ford Mustang GT 390 Fastback driven by Lieutenant Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) duelling with a Dodge Charger 440 driven by a pair of assassins down the jagged hills of San Francisco.
In the end, the Mustang with less horsepower and less torque than the Charger, caught and overtook the bigger car, forcing this bad boy to dart off the road and explode into a ball of flames.
This ending has fuelled a furious debate among car buffs. How could the Mustang beat out the Charger which had an extra 50 ponies to its credit? Some felt it was the superior handling of the Mustang. Others felt the weight of the extra person in the Charger slowed it down.
Well, Nicholas Rufford and Andrew Frankel of The Sunday Times decided there was only one way to end all the speculation. They found two cars identical to those in the film and raced them head to head. Check out the complete article at Times Online.
