Most Steve McQueen fans thought that his leap over a barbed wire fence on a hijacked German motorcycle in The Great Escape was his greatest stunt. In fact, as bikers and film buffs know, it was his close friend and biking mentor, the stuntman Bud Ekins (pronounced Eckins), who made the 65-foot-long, 12-foot-high leap in which McQueen's character, Captain Virgil Hilts, made a last-gasp attempt to reach Switzerland.

An admired bike racer himself, McQueen did perform most of his own stunts. But studio insurance concerns meant that he was obliged to call in his friend Ekins to make the jump that became movie history. The studio's PR machine, which wanted to emphasise McQueen's macho quality, never formally credited Ekins with the jump. But McQueen, asked by the US chat-show host Johnny Carson about how it felt, immediately replied: “That wasn't me. That was Bud Ekins.”

Ekins reportedly received the first $1,000 fee for a single stunt, and his motorcycle jump helped to propel McQueen into the superstar class.

In another Hollywood chase classic, Bullitt (1968), McQueen did drive the famous Highland Green '68 Ford Mustang GT that flew over the streets of San Francisco in many shots but, again, Ekins performed the most tricky and longest leaps, as well as crashing a motorcycle into the car (with McQueen at the wheel) in another memorable part of the chase. Ekins later said that he would not have performed the motorcycle stunt had the Mustang not been driven by McQueen, whom he trusted with his life.

Ekins performed memorable stunts in other movies, including Towering Inferno (1974), again with McQueen, Hell's Angels '69 (1969), considered a classic of the motorcycle gang genre, Diamonds are Forever (1971), with Sean Connery as James Bond, Electra Glide in Blue (1973), in which he drove the famous motorcycle of the title as a body double, and Race with the Devil (1975). He was a main driver in the car chase central to The Blues Brothers (1980), having already performed key stunts alongside John Belushi in Animal House (1978). After retiring from stunt work, Ekins was given many bill-paying bit parts in such movies as The Specialist (1994) and Vegas Vacation (1997).

In the early 1960s Eckins was already a gold medal-winning desert, speed trial and scramble racer, but it was his contribution to The Great Escape that turned him into one of Hollywood's most sought-after stuntmen. McQueen, who died of cancer in 1980, had met Ekins at his Triumph motorcycle dealership in California in the early 1960s. Ekins got McQueen into off-road racing and the two were later to represent the US in international six-day trial events. Ekins was the US team captain, winning four individual gold medals and one silver during the 1960s.

Although The Great Escape was based on a true story, mainly about British prisoners of war, McQueen felt that his character, Captain Hilts, needed a greater role in the film to match such stars as James Garner, Richard Attenborough and Donald Pleasence. McQueen suggested the motorcycle chase and jump, and wanted to perform it himself. Some say that he tried and failed, others that the studio did not want a star with broken legs at the premiere. Whatever the case, McQueen called in his friend Ekins to be his body double, even though Ekins was four inches taller.

Ekins, his hair bleached blond, did the jump in a single take, leaving McQueen to take over for the poster scene in which he gets caught in no man's land, and barbed wire (actually snipped-up rubber) between Germany and Switzerland.

Bud Ekins — no one ever dared ask him his real Christian name — was born in Hollywood in 1930, to a working-class family. Smitten by fast cars and motorcycles at an early age, he spent two years in reform school for joyriding in a stolen car, and later spent time hot-rodding cars at his father's welding shop. His first motorbike was a 1940 Triumph.

By the end of the 1950s Ekins had won important long-distance road and off-road races, including the Big Bear Run (three times) and the Catalina Grand Prix, before competing in the international trials in Europe. His presence at the emerging Irish Rally in Southwest Ireland in the 1960s helped to give the event worldwide publicity. Almost a decade before The Great Escape, one Irish fan recalled him jumping a barbed wire fence on a motorcycle and sidecar, pulling up at the finish line, lighting up a cigarette and pulling out a pocket flask of whisky that had been riding with him.

Ekins restored Triumphs during his retirement, sometimes for Hollywood stars, and was a life-long devotee

of the British marque. For The Great Escape scene he demanded a new (1962) TR6 model, weighing 400lb, without special suspension. The bike needed considerable work to make

it look like a Wehrmacht-issue

BMW.

In later years, he and McQueen helped to publicise the Baja 1000, a rally from Tijuana down the peninsula of Baja California in Mexico, driving a buggy-like monster they called Das Boot. Ekins also became the owner of possibly the world's most valuable collection of rare or vintage motorcycles — 150 models at one point — boasting to visitors that every one of them was functioning and roadworthy.

Often asked which stunts had most scared him, Ekins was wont to reply: “Pretty much all of them.” He was inducted into the US Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999.

Ekins's wife died in the mid-1990s. He is survived by two daughters. One, Susan Ekins, was executive producer of such films as Ocean's 11 and its sequels.

Bud Ekins, motorcycle racer and stuntman, was born on May 11, 1930. He died on October 6, 2007, aged 77