A charger for a Charger? That just doesn’t sound right
In the greatest car chase ever committed to celluloid, for the 1968 thriller Bullitt, the audience is prompted to root for the Mustang Fastback GT390 over the Dodge Charger 440 Magnum R/T. The Mustang, in a classy olive green, is as sleek and sexy as its driver, Steve McQueen, who plays the eponymous hero-cop. Stuntman Bill Hickman, playing one of the bad guys, drives the Charger, its sinister black livery echoing his suit and driving gloves, its severe lines mirroring the squareness of his jaw.
After 10 minutes of mounting tension, the chase ends with the Charger slamming into a gas station and erupting in a fireball. The Mustang careens off the road, but our hero brings it under control just before it can tip into a ditch.
The audience is meant to be relieved that the good guy wins. Me, from the first time I saw the movie in my teens and having since watched the chase sequence hundreds of times on YouTube, I’ve always regretted that the better car loses.
Not that I’d have liked to see McQueen or his wheels going up in flames — but the Charger deserved a better fate. In my entirely subjective opinion, it was the most iconic representation of an American archetype: the muscle car. At the peak of the category’s first golden era, around the time Bullitt was made, you could argue that the Mustang and Camaro were more beautiful, the Pontiac GTO and Chevy Chevelle classier — but for brute musculature, there was no matching the Charger. That is why it was a Hollywood favorite, especially as a ride for characters, good or bad, who are meant to convey menace.
That era was long gone by the time I could afford a car, and I had neither the nous nor the nerve to buy a used ’68 Magnum: The thrill of ownership would be canceled out by the cost and complications of maintenance. When the second golden age of the muscle car came around in the mid-2010s, middle-aged caution (or just plain cowardice) prevented me from taking a chance on a brand-new, 700-horsepower Charger Hellcat. But the Charger remained the only car on my bucket list.
Source: https://shorturl.at/nBRVX
