James Glickenhaus brought Steve McQueen’s Baja Boot back to life last year, recreating it as something he could drive to the race, win the race, and drive home in it too. Then he actually won the Baja 1000 in it. This is that story.
Working with the story of Hurst and Steve McQueen’s original Boot from back in the late ‘60s, a car that Glickenhaus himself bought after long obsessing over its story, Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus got to work on a new one, one that would be a comfortable road-legal SUV that could also contend and win in the biggest race around.
This is a story that could be told a lot of ways, but I think this two-part video series that SCG itself put out does a great job of showing what went into the car’s design, how it performed out in Mexico, and what it means to have contributed to the legacy of the original Boot.
The film is filled with amazing footage of the build process and its performance in the field during its first outing at Baja, where it faced off against the new Ford Bronco in a rehash of the ‘67 showdown between the original Boot and Bronco. And while back then Ford and Steve McQueen split their successes with the Boot winning the 805 km race and the Bronco winning the 1000, this time the Boot took it all.
I think that’s a great story and I’m looking forward to what else SCG can do with the Boot. It’s a mighty impressive machine that I think has a lot more in it than just a win at Baja. There’s that well-appointed interior he’s planning for the production version, and that’ll be all good and well, but I’m thinking Dakar should be its next challenge. What do you think?