seeitwith.me random outbursts of cinema appreciation

Steve McQueen, an acting racer or a racing actor? Whatever… He loved cars

"I'm not sure whether I'm an actor who races or a racer who acts." - Steve McQueen

This post is part of the Steve McQueen blog-a-thon hosted by Jason Bellamy over at Cooler Cinema

James Dean died while driving his ‘Little Bastard’ Porsche 550 spyder to a race. Paul Newman finished second in the 1979 24 Hours of LeMans, and raced at the 24 Hours of Daytona at the age of 80, only three years before he died. And yet, when you ask someone to name a famous actor that al so raced cars the answer will most likely be - Steve McQueen.

McQueen lived his life off screen with equal joy and speed as his characters. He embraced racing, be it on two or four wheels, as an escape from his worldwide fame fame that he somewhat disliked (as is the case with many actors. But come on, millions of dollars, gorgeous women, and anything you want. Is it so bad?): “I enjoy racing in any form because the guy next to me couldn’t care less what my name is. He just wants to beat me.” Fame has almost always brought with it severe consequences - drug and alcohol addiction, ruined families and often a premature death. Steve McQueen really did have it all. He was supposedly smoking insane amounts of marijuana every day, wasn’t a stranger to mounds of cocaine, he was married three times and died at 50. Which takes on an ironical twist to another racing quote of his: “Racing is the most exciting thing there is. But unlike drugs, you get high with dignity.”

Most of the information on McQueen’s racing career is unclear, as he often competed in very small races insisting on his privacy. When we think of Steve McQueen as a racer, we think of more the idolized image staring at us with those piercing blue eyes hidden in the depths of his racing helmet, or checking the time on his legendary Tag Monaco while waiting for his turn behind the wheel in an endurance race. However, one race made the legends. In 1970, McQueen entered the 12-hour race at Sebring in Florida with Peter Revson, driving a Porsche 908/2 with a 3 liter engine. The duo won in their class and placed an amazing second overall, behind a 5 liter Ferrari driven by, among others, Mario Andretti, the legendary Formula One champion. What made the race legendary is not only the lack of McQueen’s professional driving experience, but the fact that McQueen broke his foot only two weeks prior to the race. Rumors say that the cast on his foot melted off during the race. And recently, it has been brought to light that McQueen might have in fact won that race.

McQueen also competed in off-road motorcycle racing. His first off-road motorcycle was a Triumph 500cc that he purchased from friend and stunt man Ekins. McQueen raced in many top off-road races on the West Coast, including the Baja 1000, the Mint 400 and the Elsinore Grand Prix. In 1964, with Ekins on their Triumph TR6 Trophys, he represented the United States in the International Six Days Trial, a form of off-road motorcycling Olympics. He was inducted in the Off-road Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1978. In 1971, Solar Productions funded the now-classic motorcycle documentary On Any Sunday, directed by the genius Bruce Brown.

McQueen was lucky enough to have the love of extreme speed and motorized transport merge with his professional work as an actor. Probably best known to a broad audience for his Mustang driving in Bullitt, the culmination of the bond between these two passions was Le Mans. The account of the 1970 24-hour race was a box office flop, it ruined his marriage, drove most of the crew insane and almost killed McQueen several times. However, despite it’s 30 minute sequence of no dialogue and virtually no storyline Le Mans went down in history. It was a film about racing, by a racer and for racers. Or at least, for people that wanted to race.

As long as there was speed involved, McQueen didn’t exactly care what the means of transportation was. Horses, planes, motorcycles or dune buggies. It was while riding a Triumph that one of the great movie myths grew: that it was McQueen himself who made the 12ft-high jump over the barbed wire fence in the 1963 film The Great Escape. In fact his stunt double Bud Ekins carried out the jump. “I always felt a bit guilty about that,” McQueen said later. In The Thomas Crown Affair. McQueen did all his own driving during the high-speed action sequences, including those on the beach in a Chevrolet Corvair-powered beach buggy with his co-star Faye Dunaway. Remembering the shoot, McQueen said: “We did one big jump for the camera right off the edge of a high dune, and it was wild. I looked over and Faye was all bug-eyed: the back of the floorboard was scratched raw from her heels digging in.”

The reason why I love him, along with thousands of others is his true passion for cars. And his car collection. By the time of his death, his collection included over a hundred cars and motorcycles valued at thens of thousands of dollars - a Jaguar D-Type XKSS, the Porsche 917, Porsche 908 and Ferrari 512 race cars from the Le Mans film, a 1963 Ferrari 250 Lusso Berlinetta and a Porsche 356 Speedster among countless others.