Boxwish Blog

Auto of the week: TT Special 650 Triumph

Posted by Team Boxwish on 05 August 2008 at 11.15AM

We’ve gone a little retro this Tuesday for your weekly motoring moment and opted for a set of wheels that defines the term “classic”. Steve McQueen is almost as well known for his love of driving as he was his distinguished film career and even cunningly fused the two along the way, with the legendary car chase in Bullitt, 1971’s racing flick Le Mans and this – his escape attempt from a POW camp on a TT Special 650 Triumph in The Great Escape.

Stealing the bike from the Nazis that imprison him, McQueen’s Virgil Hilts makes a mad dash for freedom, but it’s not “the King of Cool” himself performing all of the stunts. Though a very capable and experienced racer, the studio, United Artists wasn’t keen for their star to perform the famous fence jump and so turned to McQueen’s friend, Bud Ekins to perform the stunt.

“We had four bikes for this film,” revealed McQueen in an interview with writer William Nolan. “I was running a TT Special 650 Triumph. We painted it olive drab and put on a luggage rack and an old seat to make it look like a wartime BMW. We couldn’t use a real BMW, not at the speeds we were running, since those old babies were rigid-frame jobs, and couldn’t take the punishment.”

The 50s and 60s was a golden age for Triumph onscreen, with the British motorcycles ridden by teen heartthrobs Marlon Brando in The Wild One and James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, as well as by McQueen. And this relationship between the iconic bikes and Hollywood continues to flourish, popping up in films such as An Officer and a Gentleman, Terminator III and Mission: Impossible II.

So, if you fancy out-running some Nazi villains or facing off against the Terminator – better get yourself a Triumph!