Oregon Studio Car Rental OSCR

A cameraman strapped to the front of a race car for a scene in the 1966 movie "Grand Prix".

Credit: color_byangelina on Instagram

Did you know that Dirty Harry’s car was deliberately chosen to be the "anti-Bullitt"? While Steve McQueen’s 1968 Bullitt made the Ford Mustang a sexy, high-performance icon, Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan drove a plain, dented 1968 Ford Custom 500. The production team selected this specific 4-door sedan because it was the actual "plain wrapper" fleet vehicle used by the SFPD at the time. They wanted to emphasize that Harry was a gritty, underpaid working cop, not a superhero. The contrast in legacy is massive: while the original Bullitt Mustang recently sold at auction for $3.74 million, Dirty Harry's Ford was considered so worthless after filming that it was likely sold for scrap or re-sold to the public for a few hundred dollars. To this day, the original screen-used car has never been found.