Carey Loftin - The Best Movie Stunt Driver?

by Mike - 

Carey Loftin was one of the best stunt drivers in the movie business.

He performed some of the exciting driving scenes for Steve McQueen in Bullitt and was the truck driver in Steven Spielberg's Duel.

Carey Loftin and one of his Bizzarrini GT 5300s, photo courtesy of Dave Loftin (from Darren Frank).

Other films in which he was involved: Vanishing Point, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Walt Disney's The Love Bug, The French Connection and many others listed in his International Movie Database biography.

He also drove the truck that killed Edith Keeler in the Star Trek episode, The City on the Edge of Forever. The car chase in Against All Odds, where he was the driver of the black Ferrari, was made when he was 68 years old.

Above is Ol' Yaller, one of Max Balchowsky's race cars, being used as a camera car on Bullitt.

Loftin had the habit of bringing his own cars to the movie set and using them as background cars. If you look closely at the opening scenes of Bullitt in the garage is a green Bizzarrini briefly in the background.

He owned three Bizzarrini GT 5300s and two Iso Rivolta GTs which he and Steve McQueen were known to drive around town.

Loftin died in Huntington Beach, California on March 4, 1997, he was 83 years old.

Click on the images for a larger view.