Tobar said:

I was fascinated with this shot in the SE because of the sudden new detail. The story always was that they had smeared vaseline on the lens while shooting to help hide the mirror covering the tires.

But it's looking like the blur was only added in post.

I will partially disagree, in fact the vaseline is probably the first thing I noticed in Mike's video, even in the raw version of the shot. I don't think I was able to see it on any other video transfer, but now there it is, plain as day.

This demonstrates the quality of Mike Verta's work, that I was able to see the vaseline on Vimeo, on a crappy display such as my monitor, and with my bad eyes.