Who can forget the first time they see the famous motorcycle jump as Steve McQueen tries to vault his way into Switzerland? Solidified with his starring role in 1963's Great Escape, McQueen's career went from strength to strength throughout the Sixties. With The Cincinnati Kid (1965), The Sand Pebbles (1966), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and Bullitt (1968)--arguably his most famous role--the Indiana-born actor established himself as Hollywood's most bankable star.

This level of box office success gave McQueen the clout to get any film green lighted, especially since he owned his own production company, Solar Productions, at the time. One of those projects was 1971's Le Mans, the first four minutes of which feature a slate-grey 1970 911S, the very car showcased on these pages.

Solar Productions had purchased the vehicle for McQueen to use in France during his time off the set. The car was equipped with almost every factory option offered at the time, including air conditioning (fairly rare in a Porsche of that era) and a U.S.-spec Blaupunkt AM/FM radio.

Apparently McQueen loved the car so much, he had it shipped home to California after the shooting wrapped up--but not before it took a detour to Stuttgart for the installation of a different set of gear ratios.

This impulse presented McQueen with something of a dilemma. A year earlier he had purchased another 911, a 1969 S model, and had gone through a great deal of effort to install a state-of-the-art audio system. With both cars in California McQueen apparently decided one 911 was enough. The car was sold to its second owner, a fellow Porsche enthusiast who saw it listed in the Los Angeles Times classifieds. (Originally willed to his daughter Terry, the "stereo" 911 has remained in the McQueen family and is still owned by his son Chad McQueen.)

The Le Mans McQueen 911 stayed with its second owner, a Southern California lawyer, for almost 35 years. For two decades, the car was reportedly a daily driver, accumulating 116,000 miles before it changed hands again in 2005.

The owner of four Porsche 356s, Jesse Rodrigues of Long Beach, California became the third owner of McQueen's 911. He had been approached about the vehicle by the second owner's wife, who, when mentioning her husband had a Porsche for sale, initially omitted the pertinent fact that the car had once been owned and driven by Steve McQueen.

During Rodrigues' ownership, the car was the subject of a number of magazine articles on both sides of the Atlantic. Rodrigues revealed that the King of Cool was something of a paper hound: Almost every scrap of paper connected to the car during McQueen's abbreviated ownership, including its U.S. importation documents, was included with the car. There was never any doubt as to its provenance.

Mercedes-Benz and Porsche collector Frank Gallogly in New Jersey purchased the car in 2009. Gallogly jumped at what he thought might be