The car chase:
Detective Bullitt spins his tires for the chase. At the time of the film's release, the car chase scene generated a tremendous amount of excitement.

Two 1968 390 CID V8 Ford Mustangs (325 bhp) were used for the chase scene, both owned by Ford Motor Company and part of a promotional loan agreement with Warner Bros. The Mustangs' engines, brakes and suspensions were heavily modified for the chase by veteran car racer Max Balchowsky. Also two 1968 440 CID/375 bhp Dodge Chargers that were bought outright from Glendale Dodge in Glendale, California were used. The engines in both Chargers were left largely unmodified, but the suspensions were upgraded to cope with the demands of the stunt work.

The director called for speeds of about 75–80 mph (120–130 km/h), but the cars (including the ones containing the cameras) reached speeds of over 110 mph (175 km/h) on surface streets. Driver's point-of-view angles were used to give the audience the "feel" of the ride as the cars jumped the hills. Filming the chase scene took three weeks, resulting in 9 minutes and 42 seconds of film. During this film sequence, the Charger loses six hubcaps and has different ones missing in different shots. As a result of shooting from multiple angles simultaneously, and some angles' footage used at different times to give the illusion of different streets, the speeding cars can be seen passing the same green VW bug four different times, and the same blue sedan with black top three times. The Charger also crashes into the camera in one scene and the damaged front fender is noticeable in later scenes. After the Charger hits a parked car, it disappears for a split second from the screen before the scene is changed.

Steve McQueen was an accomplished driver and managed to perform the bulk of the driving stunt work. The stunt coordinator, Carey Loftin, hired famed stuntman and motorcycle racer Bud Ekins to do the risky stunts in the Mustang. He is also the stunt man who lays down his bike in front of a skidding truck during the chase (Ekins also doubled for McQueen in the sequence of The Great Escape in which McQueen's character jumps over a barbed wire fence on a motorcycle). The Mustang’s interior rear view mirror goes up and down depending on who is driving: when the mirror is up (visible) McQueen is behind the wheel, and when it is down (not visible) Ekins is driving. The black Dodge Charger was driven by Bill Hickman, who also played one of the hit-men and helped with the choreography of the chase scene. The other hitman was played by Paul Genge who also rode another Dodge off the road to his death in an episode of Perry Mason - "The Case of the Sausalito Sunrise" 2 years earlier.