Few car chases have reached the fame gained by the not-so-few scenes of the 1968 Bullitt movie where Steve McQueen’s character, Lt. Frank Bullitt, drives a Mustang GT Fastback while being hunted down by hitmen in a Dodge Charger on the unforgiving streets of San Francisco. Remembering the model years of the muscle cars is easy, since they were both pictured as 1968 machines. So yes, there’s an inconsistency in staying that mixing a 1967 Mustang Fastback and a 1969 Charger, which is what happens in this CGI, compresses the film into a single vehicle. Bare with us, though, as this is the realm of renderings, where everything is possible and not necessarily wackier than a real-world build we’ll also discuss.
Dubbed The Griffin (you know, the mythological creature mixing a lion with the head and wings of an eagle), this is an elaborate 3D work that makes for an emotion-generation experiment. Who knows, perhaps this is what digital artists do to pass the time as they await for director Steven Spielberg to create a sequel to the 1968 hitโthe spoke to The Deadline about the new Bullitt title back in February, with the yet-in-its-infancy movie is set to arrive under the Warner Bros. umbrella.
Returning to the virtual contraption, this can be best described as a ’69 Charger, the kind they used in the Dukes of Hazzard TV show, whose face has been plastered onto the body of a ’68 Mustang.
As for the discrepancy mentioned in the intro, at least the said model years were mostly identical from a mechanical point of view. However, one might get Internet-lynched for putting it this way, especially in Mopar circles where the front and rear fascia changes brought by each model year of the second-gen Charger are religiously respected (and for good reason).
Now, most, if not all, renderings that play this sort of Franken-build game are quick 2D works. Nevertheless, the pixels that sit before us now make up a 3D creation and a highly photorealistic one at that.
And, if you can find the strength to go past the clash of muscle car cultures in this virtual project, you may find that The Gryphon is quite well put together. The devilish contraption is the work of two digital artists, who are known as Mike Dog (@__mikedog__) and Yaroslav Melnychuk (@yaryi45) .
The Gryphon digital muscle car also has a bit of Charger Daytona in it
As any of the said die-hard Mopar fans would tell you, there’s also a bit of 1969 Charger Daytona in here. However, the NASCAR icon’s nose cone and rear wing may only be named as a source of inspiration for the treatment applied to the nose and the posterior of The Gryphon.
We have to admit that this rendering does twist one’s mind. For instance, rarely do teasersโfor any sort of workโhave much value left once the full release arrives. However, the teasers for this 3D shenanigan might just be the most intriguing partโas you can notice in the image gallery, two of them will almost have you convinced this is yet another rendering of a restomodded classic ‘Stang.
What the real world promises to offer
And if you feel this is too much, we’ll remind you we still need to cover the real-life build mentioned in the intro. That would be a 1965 Mustang body with a modern Dodge Challenger front end and a widebody, resting on a BMW chassis.
The heresy is real, or at least this is what California-based Custom FN Customs promised to bring to the 2022 SEMA back in December last year. And with the Las Vegas custom car show kicking off in early November (here are some audacious builds debuting at the event), we’re curious to see the result of that. After all, we were given a detailed 3D preview of the project…
