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A black and gold Pontiac Firebird Trans Am built in the image of Smokey and the Bandit sold for $275,000 at Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, and Burt Reynolds drove it onto the block himself. It was not the first one he sold, and it was nowhere near the last. The car underneath the paint had almost nothing in common with a 1977 Trans Am. Read on for what buyers were really paying for.
Justin Bieber’s Ferrari was just one of many high-profile cars at this Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale sale, alongside NASCAR and Hollywood names on hand for the show. The event traces back to a 1967 local car show turned annual auction empire. Here is how it grew, and why some of the cars on the block that day were not for profit at all.
Pontiac handed Hal Needham four Trans Ams to destroy for Smokey and the Bandit, and three of them did not survive filming. The fourth finished the shoot so beaten that crew had to push it into position. That wreckage turned a slow-selling coupe into Pontiac’s best seller and made Burt Reynolds inseparable from a black and gold Firebird. Here is what really happened behind the scenes, and what those cars command today.
Every original 1977 Trans Am used in Smokey and the Bandit was destroyed after filming, leaving replicas as the only way to own a piece of the film’s legacy. Burt Reynolds commissioned his own painstaking recreation, drove it for tens of thousands of miles, and it later sold at auction for ,500 – with a similar Reynolds-owned replica later fetching over ,000. Here’s why collectors pay real money for a car that’s technically not the original.
This 1971 Ford Custom 500 spends less time on a showroom resume and more time sliding sideways through a Southern back road, doubling as the getaway car in Burt Reynolds’ 1973 chase picture White Lightning. Stunt driving from the golden age of practical car chases, with Ned Beatty playing the corrupt sheriff chasing him down. The chase still pulls in six-figure views decades later, proof that a full-size sedan can be just as thrilling as any factory muscle car when the right driver is behind the wheel.
A Pontiac G8 wearing VIN 001 spent years as a low-mileage curiosity in Burt Reynolds’ hands, eventually picking up a prototype Bandit insignia connecting it to the movie that made him famous. By the time it reached the block at Barrett-Jackson West Palm Beach it had covered barely 800 miles on its factory tires. Read on for why a Hollywood legend was standing next to Pontiac’s least flashy sedan.