Original McQueen Bullitt Mustang Sells for $3.74M
Photo: Ford Motor Company
As expected, the 1968 Bullitt Mustang driven by Steve McQueen has set a new record at auction, fetching an astonishing $3.74 million at Mecum Kissimmee 2020. The Highland Green Mustang GT hero car has long been thought lost now becomes the most valuable Ford Mustang ever sold at auction.
The starting bid for the 1968 Ford Mustang GT was $3,500, which Automotive News says was at the request of owner Sean Kiernan to pay homage to the price at which the car had previously sold on two occasions. His father, Robert, purchased the car from its second owner in 1974 at the price of $6,000.
That low starting price didn’t last long with the bidding climbing to $2 million inside of a minute. When the final hammer fell, the winning bid totaled $3.4 million, which then climbed to $3.74 million with buyers’ fees. The buyer has not been publicly named; god willing, it won’t be Jay Leno.
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A Pony from Out of the Past
Up until 2018, the assumption had been that the Bullitt Mustang had vanished. Robert Kiernan kept its continued existence a veritable secret from the world until his death in 2014, and his son maintained that ruse until he brought the car out to accompany the debuting 2019 Ford Mustang Bullitt at the 2018 Detroit Auto Show.
One person from whom the car’s owner had not been a secret: McQueen himself, who wrote Robert Kiernan in 1977 in an attempt to reacquire the car he had driven in the film.
“I would like to appeal to you to get back my ’68 Mustang,” McQueen wrote. “I would like very much to keep it in the family, in its original condition as it was used in the film, rather than have it restored; which is simply personal with me.”
Some 43 years later, the original Steve McQueen Bullitt Mustang is now in the hands of someone very lucky (hopefully not Jay Leno) and Sean Kiernan has a fortune greater than any other Mustang has ever earned in history.
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Watch: 1968 Bullitt Mustang Sells for $3.74M at Auction
Kyle S. Johnson lives in Cincinnati, a city known by many as “the Cincinnati of Southwest Ohio.” He enjoys professional wrestling, Halloween, and also other things. He has been writing for a while, and he plans to continue to write well into the future. See more articles by Kyle.