Lee Brown was the owner of Precision
Auto Body in Hollywood during the 1960s, and famously customized and painted
many of Steve McQueen’s personal cars, notably his Ferraris.
When McQueen’s Solar Productions and
Warner Brothers were getting ready to shoot Bullitt, Lee got the assignment
to customize the Mustangs a bit. While Max Balchowski did the mechanical
modifications, it was actually Lee’s handiwork which gave that Highland
Green fastback the right “look,” to become the most famous Mustang in the
world.
We spoke with Mr. Brown – still quite
spry and knowledgeable in his later years – at a classic car show in Beverly
Hills, California. He was gracious enough to answer a few burning questions
about the real Bullitt cars.
The left front fender
damage is visible in many of the chase car scenes throughout the movie. The second
cars rear fender damage matches the impact from this car.
Daily Mail/Barry Feinstein picture
Late in the afternoon, we were
expecting the carrier to come in. We all just sat around, and Steve was really
excited to see the car. He was like a kid with those things. They dropped the
cars off, and first thing he did was got in, fired one up, and just smoked the
tires all the way down the driveway. And a couple of the big guys financing
all this (the movie) said, “You know, we’re going to have to keep him away
from these cars.” They could see the problem coming!
As they appeared when they came off the
trailer, did the Mustangs have stripes on the sides?
No, I don’t think they did. I know the
stripes you’re talking about, but I don’t believe these cars had them.
What about the wheels? Do you recall
those?
If I’m not mistaken, they had a steel
wheel with the trim ring and the hubcap.
Talk about the work you did, and how it
all came about.
There were two cars, in order to have a
back-up car, and they later delivered them to my shop. And so the first day I
had them, I was just staring at them to get ideas. In the meetings we’d had at
the studio, they described the character that Steve was playing, and they were
leaving it up to me to do whatever I wanted to do to the cars. And Steve had
their blessing, so they just turned me loose. And I just stood and stared at
these cars and thought, “What would I do with these things?” They were brand-new
cars, all shiny and everything.
At the time I was in my 30s, and my shop
was kind of a gathering place. And a bunch of guys were showing up to go out to
dinner one night, and we were all looking at the car and talking about what to
do with it. So we popped a couple of beers and discussed what to do. So, the car
was sort of done by committee. And I said to the guys, “Okay, this guy (Lt.
Frank Bullitt) is supposed to be a reckless wacko when he drives a car.” So we
decided that obviously he’s damaged it to some degree. And while he had a
penchant for a sort of custom look, he just wasn’t that good at keeping up his
car. Particular about the car in one way, but he just didn’t keep it up. He beat
the (expletive) out of his car.
So I parked the car in the back of the
shop, and I got maybe five or six car lengths away from it with the other car,
and just drove right into it! And if I’m not mistaken, the first hit was the
left front fender into the right quarter. I’d have to look at the film, but one
car should have some damage to the right quarter, and the other to the left
front fender.
And then I thought, “Well, he lives in
San Francisco, and there are a lot of parking meters in San Francisco.” So I had
this thing called a ‘cheater pipe’ that you’d use to bend metal. I opened the
hood and I just nailed the front edge of it, to simulate a parking meter hit.
And then I went around the car with a pick-hammer, up and down both sides, and
put a bunch of door dents in it. I also put chips in the edges of the doors.
Then, we Bon-Ami’d the car to take all the gloss off it. We knocked it down so
it wouldn’t be shiny. [Editor’s note: Bon-Ami is a powdered household scouring
cleanser.]
You took all the badges off the car, the
grill pieces and the fog lights?
Yes, because it was supposed to be a bit
of a custom car, so we took all that off. On the gas cap, we just took
everything off, like the GT emblem, and just painted the center black.
What about painting over the various
chrome pieces on the car?
The studio did that after it left my
shop.
And the stock wheels came off,
obviously.
I put some new Shelby 10-spokes on it,
but when it got to San Francisco they had put these wheels on it. [Editor’s
note: He’s referring to the American Racing Torq Thrusts on the replica he’s
standing in front of.]But when the cars came back, they had the 10-spokes on
them. In fact, I hadn’t even realized the wheels had been changed until I saw
the actual movie.
Can you talk about the Shelby steering
wheel? Do you remember where it came from?
When doing things with Steve, there were
always a couple of sources. There was an assistant he had named Betsy, like a
runner. Steve would say, “Get me a six-legged squirrel,” and she would take off
and come back with it. She was amazing, and she got the steering wheel from
somewhere.
And Tony Nancy covered the wheel rim
with padding and leather?
No, it wasn’t Tony. That was done at
Thomas Top, a small upholstery shop on Cahuenga in Hollywood.
Do you remember about the antenna,
removing it?
No, I don’t. But I can tell you that
Steve didn’t like antennas on any of his cars, and I did remove and relocate
antennas from many of his cars from the front to the back.
Did you remove the stock mirror? The car
is seen in the movie with either no mirror or a non-stock one.
They probably did that after the car got
onto the location in San Francisco. I never did that.
There’s
a common misconception that the taillight panel was painted black, because it
can appear that way on home video due to shadows. Can you confirm that you never
did paint the back of the car flat black?
No, we never changed that.
You knew Max Balchowski, who did the
mechanical work on the car. Did he do his work after yours?
You know, I can’t remember if Carey
(Loftin, the stunt coordinator) picked the cars up or I took them over to Max’s
shop. It was right over off Hollywood Boulevard, only about five or six blocks
from mine. He had to brace the cars so they’d hold up when they’d crash them and
stuff. I know he also had the Dodges at his shop for a bit.
Max and I were great friends, in fact he
stood up for me at my wedding! That guy knew a LOT about everything.
Speaking of the Dodge Chargers, did you
paint those too? They may have been other colors initially.
I never saw those cars in any color but
black, right from the start. If they had been other colors, they might have been
painted before they left the dealer.
What about the real surviving Mustang?
You’ve no doubt heard about it over the years.
Every time I think about that car it
brings tears to my eyes. When the movie was finished, I had gone out to lunch
one day and came back and the cars were sitting in my shop. And I thought, “Oh
my God, what are THESE doing here?” And I walked around the cars and they were
just thrashed. On one, the front cross-member underneath was all torn out. The
cars were terrible! Back then, I would only think about making things as they
should be, in order to either use it or sell it. There was no value to a car
that had just been hammered through a movie. To me, they were absolutely
worthless. The mindset at the time was “You can’t make them back into a usable
car again.”
The property department called me up and
wondered what I’d give them for it, you know, anything. And I said I really
didn’t want it, and it was taking up space in my shop, which was pretty small. I
told them to come and get it. And I probably called them no less than half a
dozen times and said “Get it off my lot, you gotta get these cars out of here.”
The last phone call I remember telling the guy, “I tell you what. If you don’t
get it by tomorrow afternoon, I’m going to push it out onto Hollywood Boulevard
and just leave it there, and the cops will come and snap it up for plugging
traffic, and then you can go get it out of impound!”
And the guy said, “Just give me ANYTHING, any amount I
can put on this line next to the cars to show that I’ve disposed of them.”
And I just said, “Tomorrow…” That got some
action, as they came and picked them up.
But that hero car, I know that’s worth a
fortune now. I guess I should have kept them!