I had the mustache back in the day, but I didn't look like him." And my wife fell in love with Burt Reynolds.
"The movie made the car popular, really more with non-car people.
It was a big car for us," said Art Douglas, 61, of Jim Douglas Auto Sales on Baldwin Avenue in Pontiac, which his father founded in 1975.
"We could have our whole front line full with Trans Ams. And the quickest way to be like him was to get a Pontiac Trans Am.”Īuto companies love to see their cars featured in movies. They want to be a movie star with a hot babe. “There were so many young men who wanted to be exactly like Burt Reynolds. “Burt Reynolds exemplified a crazy wild reckless handsome persona and he had this babe of a girlfriend at the time,” said John McElroy, 65, longtime industry observer and host of Autoline.TV. It turned out to be a top grossing film that year, along with "Star Wars," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Saturday Night Fever."īurt Reynolds was born in this Michigan city Justice, aka "Smokey," (played by Jackie Gleason).Ī chase ensues with a bride on the run. En route, Bo "Bandit" Darville (played by Burt Reynolds) picks up a pretty hitchhiker (played by Sally Field) who refuses to marry the son of Sheriff Buford T. The 1977 action romance is about a guy who makes a Coors beer run from Texas to Georgia within 28 hours. By comparison, the top Camaro of the same year - a 1977 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 - is worth $22,000 in the current market.”
“In the current market, a 1977 Pontiac Trans Am Special Edition - similar to what Burt Reynolds drove in the film - is worth $76,000. "We specifically refer to late second-generation Trans Ams as the '“Smokey and the Bandit'-era Trans Am.” “Without a doubt, the popularity of late ‘70s Pontiac Trans Ams is due to its prominent role in the 'Smokey and the Bandit' film," said Jonathan Klinger, spokesman for Hagerty, which specializes in classic car valuation and insurance. Burt Reynolds will always be remembered for the high-speed chase scenes in “Smokey and the Bandit.”Īnd those images directly impacted the car industry.