As a man who spent his formative years shunted from home to home to correctional institute, Steve’s love of speed was oddly poignant. After all, even when he had achieved worldwide success, it always seemed like the King of Cool was seeking to escape the past and chase after something new; a man with an insatiable appetite for new thrills and spills despite having encountered plenty of both. A man who was always trying to go faster.



Steve’s need for speed was present from an early age: his father had been a stunt pilot and his grandparents could be heard recalling a young McQueen tearing around on a red tricycle when questioned about his early years. Time spent tinkering on a hot rod with at the tender age of 12 only increased his passion for all things mechanical, and by 17 Steve had enlisted in the Marine Corps, where he was assigned to the tank division to indulge his passion for mechanics further.

After being discharged from the Navy, Steve moved to New York, where he juggled the roles of mechanic and acting student - eventually getting his hands on an Indian motorcycle complete with sidecar. From then on, Steve’s love affair with motorsport blossomed alongside his career. Having moved to Los Angeles, Steve would go on to weave cars and motorcycles into the narrative of an expansive acting career. One always sensed that this onscreen relationship left Steve feeling unsatisfied, and it was to no great surprise that Steve registered to compete in the International Four Day Trial in 1964 and the Sebring 12 Hours in 1970. Having placed an eminently respectable overall 2nd in the latter, the seeds had been sown for what critics would call the ultimate vanity project, though Steve preferred the label of ‘ultimate racing film’.



Filmed on location at the Circuit de la Sarthe and funded by Steve’s very own Solar Productions, ‘Le Mans’ polarised opinion. On the one hand, Steve assembled some of world’s best drivers and was able to capture stunning footage at the Circuit de la Sarthe. On the other, he arrived onset without a script and had director John Sturges (who had previously directed Steve in the Great Escape and Magnificent Seven) walk out on the project soon after joining the crew in France.

This spelled disaster for everyone backing the project - everyone that is but Steve. With no big personalities left for his ego to clash with, Steve embarked on his quest to make the ultimate racing film with a ferocious single-mindedness - logging hundreds of hours behind the wheel in the process. The result? A film that motorsport fans loved and film critics dismissed.

Though motorsport fans would argue that ‘Le Mans’ was an artistic success (albeit a commercial letdown), the effects of the production effort on Steve were considerable. He lost friends, the support of his wife Neile (who confronted him about his misdemeanours in a fiery on-set encounter and almost bankrupted Solar Productions in the pursuit of perfection. And, although his career would eventually recover, Steve himself was never quite the same.

Having effectively retired from Hollywood, Steve contracted an aggressive form of mesothelioma and lost the race he had been competing in all his life. He died in 1980 of complications from surgery and left behind a legacy that has cemented his reputation as the King of Cool since. The films, the cars, the style… Steve had it all, and collectors today pay exorbitant sums of money to get a slice of Steve’s collection of vehicles.

Dubbed the ‘Steve McQueen Effect’ by collectors, the Steve McQueen connection is a phenomenon that increases the value of vehicles previously owned by the actor tenfold. After all, Steve’s dual presence as a bona fide Hollywood star, style icon and petrolhead is unique within the realm of celebrity - no actor has achieved such success in the field of motorsport, nor courted its fans so actively. With this in mind, it’s fitting that the reputation of a man who was seemingly born to race should have such a lasting effect on the tools of his trade. Either way, we think Steve would have liked being valued so highly.