Bill Hickman

Bill Hickman drives the black 1968 Charger against Steve McQueen's 1968 Mustang in the Most popular car chase scene in the history of film making.

"Bullitt" with Steve McQueen, 1968.

 By Tim Black

How did Bill Hickman in the Ford wagon keep up with Dean so that at the end of the day of hard driving and over 200 miles later he was still so close behind Dean? Hickman estimated they came upon the wreck five minutes after the collision; Roth estimated ten minutes. They caught up with Dean at Blackwell's Corner but Dean was reportedly there only fifteen minutes, total. It would seem they could not have been more than ten minutes behind Dean at that point if they were able to meet and visit briefly before hitting the road again.

Here is an interesting take on the issue:

Hickman, an experienced performance driver, could possibly have pushed James Dean's 1955 Ford Country Squire station wagon enough to stay within a few short minutes of Dean's Porsche up to Blackwells's Corner if you compare the power of engines in each car, the characteristics of the road up to that point, and Dean's state of mind.

The Ford wagon had the 272 cubic-inch V8, which was measured on the standard American system of mesurement, and the model 547 1.5 liter Porsche engine was a metric measurement in cubic centimeters. Cross-referencing 1.5 liters to cubic-inches would give you 90.9 cubic inches which is aproximately 1/3 the size of the engine in the Ford wagon.

Even though the 547 Porsche engine was a well-tuned and precision German-Engineered racing engine, and the Ford's was a lazy and inefficient V8, there is no substitute for engine mass when it comes to flat-out top-end power on the straight road.

The Porsche, no matter how much fun Dean was having going down the Grapevine, was built for racetracks, not highways, and the Ford wagon was built for highway driving even though it was towing Jimmy's race trailer.

One could say the Ford's lumbering and bloated mass combined with a rudimentary front suspension was not suited to take corners as well and even with an experienced driver like Hickman it would have been hard pressed to keep up if Dean had his pedal to the metal.

Dean knew how to handle that Spyder to some degree because he had a Speedster, and even though the Speedster was not as powerful as the 550, it was every bit as agile and much more forgiving around curves. It took every advantage of its low center of gravity much like the later 914 did.

However, the 550 had higher pivot angles which created an oversteer problem. That meant if you did not finesse the wheel properly, you could spin out very easily if you were inexperienced with the 550. The ass-end would come around and slap you in the face for trying to beat the laws of physics.

Dean had the mastering of that sensitivity on his agenda as he drove the 550 on the trip to Salinas so he would have been aware of every movement around corners. This was probably why he had Rolf light his cigarettes. He knew that over-steer issue would be his Achilles Heel at Salinas as he whipped around the track.

So the wagon would not have had any trouble keeping up a reasonable distance from Dean especially on the straights and with Dean finessing the 550 around the sharper corners.  

A Restored 1955 Ford Country Squire. This one is similar to the one Jimmy owned. Driving it, Bill Hickman, with Sanford Roth, was able to stay within ten minutes of the "Little Bastard" all the way from Hollywood to Cholame.