KING FOR A DAY

There's cool, and then there's driving Steve McQueen's dune buggy on a California beach cool. Mark Dixon does his best to live up to the legend

- Mark Dixon

The young couple in the Ferrari 360 are full of admiration as they pull up alongside us on the beachfront road. 'Nice car, man!' says the driver from behind his mirror shades. "Thanks!' I reply.

'We're photographing it for a magazine - it's the actual buggy driven by Steve McQueen in the movie The Thomas Crown Affair! The guy pauses for a moment longer before nodding vaguely, and then he and his bleach-blonde girlfriend are gone in a swirl of windblown sand. "They didn't have a clue who I was talking about, did they?' I remark to my friend and photographer Evan Klein. 'Nope!' he replies.

It's a recurrent theme. As we grab some shots beside the Pacific Ocean, several passers-by compliment this Meyers Manx buggy, the epitome of Californian beach life. Each time we explain its significance, more often than not their slightly glazed expressions suggest they've never heard of Steve McQueen. Can this really be true? Has the King of Cool finally lost his crown?

It's hard to believe. I've just spent an hour blasting along the Pacific Coast Highway in Steve McQueen's actual dune buggy. Let me repeat that: Steve McQueen's actual dune buggy. It's the focus of a key scene in the movie, when his character, the gentleman thief Thomas Crown, takes insurance investigator Vicki Anderson (played by Faye Dunaway) for a wild ride around the dunes in his customised Meyers Manx buggy. There are no stunt doubles here: McQueen yomps and drifts and handbraketurns the Manx with total abandon while Dunaway gamely attempts to stay in her seat, laughing all the while. Go girl!