A black-and-gold 1978 Pontiac Trans Am built to Burt Reynolds’ own specification crossed the Barrett-Jackson block in Las Vegas in 2018, weeks after the actor’s death, and brought $192,500. Two other 1978 Trans Ams in the same sale, mechanically similar but with no connection to Reynolds, sold for a fraction of that. The gap is the whole story of how provenance works in the collector market, and why the Bandit car mattered in the first place.