Thursday 3 January 2013

Testing a Bullit

Ever seen the film Bullit with Steve McQueen and one of the best car chase scenes ever filmed ?


In 2001 Ford made a limited edition Ford Mustang Bullit to celebrate the film, production was limited to 5582 and of those only 722 were in blue.
That's what you can see in the photo - one of the very rare blue ones. The father, Mickey, of my son-in-law has one and over the Xmas holiday period I got a chance to sit in it and was taken for a ride.

We both loved the sound of the engine and Mickey said that he didn't have to use a higher gear than 3rd as that was easily enough to get him to the speed limit.

Which got me thinking about testing...

How would you test this car ?

Would you spend more time and effort into testing the lower gears given that they were enough to drive everywhere and the higher gears would only be used at illegal speeds ?

Mickey was complaining that the new Mustangs just didn't sound like the old ones - so would you even think about testing the sound the car made ? How would you know a 'good' sound from a poor one ?

Given that the car is named after the film, how far do you take the 'consistent with image' heuristic ? Do you test it looks 'cool' like Steve McQueen (define 'coolness' !) or that it can survive a car chase through San Fransisco?

Thoughts ?


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