Steve McQueen's Love For Racing Might Have Come From His First Car

Actor Steve McQueen had a well-documented love for cars and auto racing. He not only starred as endurance racer Michael Delaney in the 1971 drama "Le Mans" but also took to the track as a competitor in the Mojave Desert 500 and the 12 Hours of Sebring. "Le Mans" included real footage from the 1970 race; McQueen wanted to enter that year, but the film's insurance company wouldn't allow it.

British racing legend Derek Bell, who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans five times and served as a stunt driver for "Le Mans," told Motorsport Magazine that McQueen held his own during test laps with Bell and Swiss F1 veteran Jo Siffert. " Both Jo and I said we've got to drive flat out," Bell said. "We wanted it to be real. We weren't taking maximum revs, but we were driving hard, 1-2-3 like that. I told [McQueen] he didn't have to keep his foot in it. But he did, because he could. Steve was a racer, in my opinion."

Steve McQueen's love for racing was evident from his experience with cars as a young stage actor. In an excerpt from the book "My First Car" by Matt Stone, published in Maxim, McQueen talked about the MG TC he found in 1952 while in Columbus, Ohio with a touring production of "Time Out for Ginger."

McQueen had saved up $450, $300 short of the owner's asking price. "I put down $450," he said, "and I told the owner I'd send more money from each overnight stop we made. It was finally delivered to me in Chicago. That's when I asked for a raise and got booted out of the play. So, I jumped into my MG and drove it all the way back to New York."

McQueen said the fragile British sports car was no match for the rough streets of the Big Apple. "I sold it after three axles broke," he said, "and the spokes kept shredding out of those wire wheels. I decided to stick with cycles for a while." 

Steve McQueen's motorcycle riding ability was featured heavily in the 1963 classic "The Great Escape." During filming, producers realized that McQueen was actually a better rider than some of the stunt performers who had been hired to play German soldiers, so they put him in an SS uniform and filmed him riding, later editing those shots to show him pursuing his character, Virgil Hilts.

McQueen's first experience with four-wheeled vehicles came when he was just 12 and he helped an older friend put together a hot rod. At 17, he joined the Marine Corps, where he was assigned to the tank corps. Even though he was just a fresh-faced jarhead, he couldn't fight his budding gearhead tendencies.

"We had this old tank," he said, "and I thought it could be souped up. So a couple of guys and me, we really worked it over, porting and milling the heads, fooling around with the timing and carburetion. Well, we took it out for a timed run on the day we finished. And the laugh was on us; it didn't go any faster."