In the 1950s and ‘60s, Ekins was the man to beat in California scrambles and desert races, winning the Big Bear National Hare and Hound three times (1954, 1957, 1959), and the Catalina Grand Prix (1955). In 1962 Ekins was the first American to win gold at the International Six Days Trial (ISDT), repeating in 1963, 1966, and ‘67. He was Steve McQueen’s racing mentor and performed stunts in over 200 films, including the fence jump in 1963’s The Great Escape. In 1966, Ekins captained a foursome that rode the Baja length in record time, setting the stage for the Baja 1000. Later, Ekins switched to trucks, winning the inaugural Baja 500 (1969). Ekins was inducted into the Hollywood Stuntmen’s Hall of Fame, the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame (1980), and AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame (1999).
By Perry King
It’s an overused phrase, but in Bud’s case it was absolutely true. He was a legend in his own time. People talked about him in hushed tones, particularly if he was anywhere around. He was arguably the coolest guy who ever lived, even cooler than his best friend, the King of Cool, Steve McQueen, and McQueen knew it.
Bud’s stats are breathtakingly impressive. As someone once said, the list of races he didn’t win is shorter than the list he did win.
By the mid-1950s, Bud was the top motocross and desert racer in Southern California and won the AMA District 37 championship seven times. Bud ended up doing so well financially from racing in Europe that he was able to open a dealership for Triumph motorcycles in Los Angeles, where one of his customers was McQueen. That began a friendship that has become iconic.
When McQueen went to Europe to shoot “The Great Escape” (1963), Bud joined him as his stunt double, and together they created a motorcycle sequence that is probably the reason thousands upon thousands of motorcyclists today ride bikes. The stories are endless, but in my mind the best stories are what came out of the shooting of that film. During a break in shooting, Bud took a couple weeks to compete in that year’s International Six Days Trial. During his career Bud won four gold medals and a silver in seven years of competing in the ISDT during the 1960s. When he returned to the set, he showed his gold medal to McQueen and ignited a fire in the actor to win one of his own. Bud told him that he’d have to quit that “acting crap” for a year to get ready — which McQueen agreed to.
For the next year, while they raced on the weekends, during the week McQueen worked at Bud’s shop as a mechanic. During that year if you brought a flat tire in for service, Bud would throw it in the back through a service window and time how long it took to come back repaired. Bud had told McQueen that if he couldn’t fix a flat in three minutes, he’d never win a medal. So, little did any of the customers know that in the back of Bud’s Triumph shop, covered in grease and sweat, was the biggest movie star in the world.
In 1964, for a few days, the first American team to compete in the ISDT was winning, beating out teams that were fully funded and trained by nations. Then it all went south. Both Bud and Steve crashed out, although Bud’s younger brother Dave went on to win a Gold. There’s a great picture of Bud and Steve, both of them wounded, with Bud strapped up and Steve with cuts all over his movie star face. They both look so content.
The racer’s motto is always: win or crash. Second place is just first loser. The world assumes that McQueen’s stuntman wished that he could be the movie star, but for those who knew either of them, the truth was that Steve knew Bud was the real deal, not an actor pretending, and the only thing Bud ever wanted to be was the winner — every time.
Perry King is an actor who has more than a hundred movie and TV credits to his name, but in his words, “I only acted to earn money to buy motorcycles.” Like everyone else, he worshipped his friend Bud Ekins for his skills and his cool.