A grid full of booted Mustangs of a type that raced up to 1966 with the entertaining Ken Miles Cup. The 45-minute, two-driver race, was named to honour the Sutton Coldfield-born driver and mechanic most famous for helping to turn the Ford GT40 into a three-time Le Mans winner, as well as making the Mustang an effective race car. Numerous Shelby Mustang GT350 fastbacks also competed in the Graham Hill Trophy race at the Members’ Meeting.
After the excitement of Goodwood, I attended a smaller but calmer local classic car meeting, which also featured a healthy stable of Mustangs to mark the American Ford’s 60th birthday. One of the undoubted stars of this strong gathering was a recently recreated 1968 Mustang GT350 fastback. Painted in metallic Highland Green, it was a very convincing ‘homage’ to the famous Mustang driven by Steve McQueen’s gritty Californian detective Frank Bullitt in the 1968 movie Bullitt, in arguably one of the most celebrated cinematic car chases of all time.
The winning combination of an unfazed actor such as McQueen, in an equally cool coupé helped to give the Mustang instant appeal and added to its enviable longer-term legacy. The famous Bullitt car chase sequence inevitably gave the Mustang cult status. Already a run-away success from the moment it was first unveiled in 1964 – the fastest-selling new car model in American history no less – the Mustang was a proven winner by the time it appeared in Bullitt in fastback GT form four years later, chasing a couple of baddies in a black Dodge Charger around the undulating streets of San Francisco.