One of The Autopian’s great strengths is the powerful hive-mind that is you, the readers. On more than a few occasions, we’ve tapped that vast, collective automotive intellect to solve mysteries, ID obscure cars and parts, and even nab bad guys. And now, I’m hoping you can help me with a couple of things I’ve been wondering about for a while.
The first query involves what is likely considered one of the worst movie sequels of all time, Smokey and the Bandit II from 1980. This stinker is bad even for a Burt Reynolds film, which is really saying something.
Admittedly, the original Smokey wasn’t exactly Chaucer; much of the humor is cringe-inducing today even if you’re barely politically aware, let alone correct. Still, it was big dumb fun that Jerry Reid, Sally Field, and Burt-as-a-dufus made watchable.
However, none of Burt’s self-deprecation or breaking the fourth wall was going to save the sequel. Everything was worse; a terrible story, lamer jokes, and a far worse hero car. Like the first movie itself, the 400 cubic inch V8 1977 Trans Am featured in the original wasn’t ultra-sophisticated, but still mighty amusing.
The 1980 Trans Am Turbo in the sequel can be considered an analog for the letdown that was Smokey II. Like other malaise turbos (Ford Mustang 2.3, early Buick Regal), the Trans Am Turbo was a desperate attempt to get the power of a big motor with the gas mileage of a smaller one. As with those other early turbo cars, the force-fed 301 V8 in the 1980 Trans Am offered worse performance (over 1.5 seconds slower to sixty) and similar fuel lack-of-economy, while throwing in poor reliability from early engine management systems to prevent detonation. Brilliant. At least the hood featured a screaming chicken decal breathing fire and had funky, vague TURBO CHARGE lights on the back of the scoop.
Ah, but what about the mystery? I won’t get into what poses for a plot in this film but the ending involves a massive battle between police cars and trucks that results in carnage that was likely a lot funnier to the producers than the audience. In this wreck-fest, you quickly notice that a large number of the cars being destroyed are in fact brand new cars, namely 1980 Pontiac LeMans (LeManses?).
There are a lot of older cars in the mix, too, but I count at least ten or a dozen of the new rides. Adjusted for inflation, these are around $45,000 apiece, and considering that you could buy almost anything to decorate as a cop cruiser, why would you waste a half million of the movie budget on anything other than old sleds (especially a film that, by Burt’s own admission, was a cash grab)?
The commonly told explanation is shown on Wikipedia, with zero citations:
The roundup sequence in the desert shows many new Pontiac Le Mans sedans decorated as police cars being destroyed. The cars were originally ordered by a car rental agency which refused to accept the delivery as they were not equipped with air conditioning. Pontiac took the cars back and eventually gave them to the producers to be used in the film.
I’ve read this on other sites as well, yet nobody has any confirmation. Does this make sense? Could they really “forget” to check the A/C box on the order sheet? I mean, these 1978-81 A-bodies (later called G-bodies) famously had fixed rear windows so they would have been unusable by the alleged rental agency in the southwest. But destroy the cars?
Admittedly, a similar thing happened with similar A-bodies when Iraq refused to take delivery of the 12,500 of strangely-equipped Malibus they ordered. The “Iraqi taxis” or “Iraquibus” had a 3.8 liter V6 with a three-speed floor shift manual, dog-dish-car steelies, and cloth seats (but, in fact, air conditioning). They ended up being sold at a deep discount in Canada.
But what about the Smokey and the Bandit II LeMans carnage? Why didn’t these end up in the land of poutine and Moving Pictures where A/C could begrudgingly be lived without? You guys can identify a car from taillight fragments, right? Can anyone verify the story?
This Car Week Parking Lot Had An Amazing Car From An Iconic Movie: Cold Start – The Autopian
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Remember When A Batman Movie Used A Ton Of VW Foxes?: Cold Start – The Autopian
Is there a directory commentary or something available somewhere? Feels like something that’d come up if there was, although my copy is one disc with all three movies and no extras.
And more benign, but I’ve seen fleet cars show up with stuff like Bluetooth missing because it was moved from standard to optional, or cars get delivered to the wrong city because Excel filled in location numbers as a sequence rather than copied, so there’s at least a whiff of plausibility. Given that Canada had gone metric by 1980, they probably weren’t going to convert them for sale there, although surely you could find buyers in New England. As mentioned, it’s probably just Pontiac bending over backwards once they realized how many Trans Ams the first one sold.
LOL at GM’s fixed rear windows. They were too stupid to even offer a slider like in the Renault 3, for example.
It is just good old product placement which is dirt cheap advertising. The first movie moved a lot of high margin Trans Ams, so getting the LeMans some screen time was a very attractive proposition for GM. As someone mentioned it is also a good chance that these were pre-production models that would have ended up crushed anyway.
“It is just good old product placement which is dirt cheap advertising”
Does showing a crappy car being driven by flunkies and destroyed really sell it though?
I suspect that GM simply gave the producers whatever they asked for and did not concern themselves too much with cost. For the first movie, I recall that GM said no to Needham when he asked for free cars. After it made big bank and sold a lot of Trans Ams, they were much more receptive the second time around and I think they just opened the doors and said have at it.
And maybe they were preproduction VINs or otherwise unsalable cars that were going to get scrapped anyway.
Yeah, and GM used to often assign pilot production cars without valid VINs to zone managers and the like, and they had a lot more of those lower and middle management people back in the late ’70s/early ’80s than they do now – more divisions, more sales volume, more offices, more dealers to oversee, plus the whole GMAC side of the operation. After they were rotated out of the fleet, they had to be crushed or otherwise destroyed (crash testing, cut up for interior brochure photos, whatever).
Mr Saddam Hussein or his government ordered some Malibus which were famously defective…and were rejected as a result. That did not stop other vehicles such as Squarebodies from being popular though….during that time…
Iraq canceled the order after receiving half the cars, the official reason they gave was that taxi drivers didn’t like shifting the 3 speed manual that had been special ordered, but it seems more likely that it was currency issues stemming from the Iran Iraq War. A similar thing happened in 2003, Iraq had ordered a huge shipment of Volga 3110 taxis from GAZ, which ended up stranded in Russia due to the US-led special military operation, the new government officially cancelled that order
Hmm. I see. I though there generally were reliability problems with the cars (there probably might have been), that is why…
Alot of those cars of that era weren’t ordered with AC. Knew many people with mid 70-mid 80 cars with no air. It’s not like now where it is basically standard on everything.
Yes, hell passenger-side mirrors were not even standard equipment until sometime in the 1990s.
It wasn’t until my mom bought a new 88 Mazda 626 that my family got a car with AC. It replaced a Fairmont that in turn had replaced an non Grabber package Maverick.
That sounds quite a bit like Chaucer, actually.
Point taken, sir!
And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.
We can rationally solve this through data science. Subtract the result of the absolute value of movie release date minus 1979 from 100, add the number of cars crashed or laser pew pew sounds, then multiply by the federal reserve interest rate for the year equals percent chance of financial success in the drive in theater market.
Of course the formula breaks down when you jump the shark.
You forgot to mention the de minimus coefficient in addition to the amount of flux generated by the turbo encabulator.
I grew up in a family with one of these model cars (not the rejected rental, but a Grand LeMans). From day 1, it leaked every fluid except brakes while flexing its prowess in overheating and uncorrectable engine performance issues.
Build quality made a Renault Alliance seem well-assembled in comparison.
My stepdad traded that four-door critical mass of fail for a gently-used, first-year Pontiac J2000. Despite all the issues with that J car, our family still considered this to be a major step up in quality.
Crashing and destroying those turds was the right thing to do. Grand, my ass.
Hit and miss is what I’ve heard. As a kid the ones that people at church bought in the early eighties did indeed leak fluid and parts fell off, while those I knew that got 78-79 cars were quite happy. As always, the lack of opening rear windows was just the worst part.
just a minor quibble: Jerry Reed not Reid.
Bishop, yer dummer than ma dawg Fred here.
Sounds like a great way to hide a recall from the authorities to me.
In the 90’s I worked at a Ford Dealership and was in charge of ordering cars. By this time the “Equipment Packages” were becoming normal. This meant you couldn’t order a power sunroof on a Taurus wagon with a passenger power seat for a customer special order. I would get dos matrix printout from the factory confirming the car I ordered. Unfortunately for me there was one additional line on the back page which informed me that the sunroof could not be combined with a power passenger seat.
Needless to say the customer was pretty upset that he couldn’t get his custom ordered wagon the way he wanted, and refused to accept delivery.
I thought I was gonna be fired, but I think we dealer swapped it out for one of the Explorers which were going for crazy ADMs.
So. yeah, considering there probably wasn’t any computer system or a Group Package to order, I could see how someone could fail to check the AC box.
IIRC, Hal Needham went to Ford first to use the Mustang II King Cobra for free. Ford either gave him a flat out no or a we’ll get back to you. It’s in his biography, “Stuntman.!”
Automakers put two kinds of cars in movies. Cars they want to sell (GM –> Transformers) and cars they can’t sell (see here).
Cars they want to sell generate revenue for very little cost.
Cars they can’t sell become a business loss (financial benefit compared to … scrapping them?)
In some rare instances you get both at the same time. Like 19 Acura ZDX getting blown up in Thor. They wanted to sell them, but also couldn’t.
It’s also the sad arc of the BMW i8 going from hero car in Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol to random collateral bus fight damage in Shang-Chi.
This – the actual cost to produce yet another car to a manufacturer is very, very little. You could write them off at full price (especially back in those days when the IRS rules were a lot more flexible).
Also – $45K inflation-adjusted for a base model Pontiac mid-sizer? I very, very much doubt that. A quick Google sez they at rather less than $6K new, which is ~$24K today. Probably could get a really optioned-up one to an inflation-adjusted $30K, but these evidently didn’t even have A/C.
Yeah, the Jurassic Park Explorer XLTs were famously from a Ford holding lot in the southeast that had flooded, rendering them unsaleable. And they used way more than two, obviously
Perhaps, in a fit of social consciousness, the producers decided to use some of their Hollywood money for the forces of good and just remove these pieces of garbage from the system.
Covered this on an episode of Reels & Wheels Podcast. I believe they were a bunch of fleet cars that were ordered and came without air conditioning so nobody wanted them.
https://reelsandwheels.libsyn.com/smokey-and-the-bandit-ii-reels-and-wheels
As Edward said, it’s entirely because of Blues Brothers.
Hollywood’s motto: Why do something original when you can just remake?
OK, S&TB II is not good. But think of how bad it could have been.
Apparently Hall Needham called up Brock Yates shortly before principal filming began and said “the script stinks. You’ve gotta help me.” What we got was the best they could do under the circumstances. And, car aside, it stunk, save for Sally Field’s heartfelt (and apparently real) speech to the Bandit.
I LOVE the original: Jackie Gleason’s Sherriff Buford T. Justice (an officer with over 30 years seniority) is nothing less than brilliant, and the rest of it is fun, even if it is very much of its time.
Like The Cannonball Run, unfortunately the funniest part of the whole film is the outtakes they show during the credits at the end.
Fun fact, Jackie Chan’s appearance in The Cannonball Run is what inspired him to have a blooper reel at the end of all of his movies.
The best stuff in Cannonball was the stuff that was real. Hard to believe, but…some of it was.
Highly recommend Brock Yates’ book on the Cannonball.
Just going to throw this out here, Jackie Gleason showed up to a Burt Reynolds tribute in character as Buford T. Justice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gklRF1EFmtQ
So, fun fact, the engine and shifting sounds you hear in the first movie are actually made by the 55 Chevy that Harrison Ford drove in American Graffiti. The sounds aren’t lifted from that movie or anything, but what you hear is the same car
To this day, my dad still says he would have won if he had been driving the 55 in American Graffiti. Therefore, my dad > Han Solo.
And if I’m not mistaken, that ’55 can be traced back to Two Lane Blacktop. Great piece of trivia if one ever asks how The Beach Boys and Jerry Reed are connected.
This era of Pontiacs pretty much came from the factory pre-trashed, so it was probably the cheapest option available. Or maybe the producers had a focus group and one of the questions was “what type of car would you like to see demolished in Burt Reynolds’ new movie?” Believe it or not, this film isn’t even in the top ten movies for most cars destroyed in filming.
1980 saw a lot of cars trashed in movies. Blues Brothers came out that year also.
It also got a crappy, now largely forgotten sequel like Smokey and the Bandit, and being they didn’t learn from S&BII, decided to shoehorn in a massive car pile up scene in a clear telling-the-same-joke-twice nod to the first, and to secure the Guinness world record for most cars wrecked in a movie, which I believe it still holds from 1998. That didn’t help the movie not suck eggs though.
The whole movie reeks of studio “involvement” (we should add a kid!).
And I don’t care if the Crown Vic they used had cop tires, cop shocks and went good on regular gas. That thing wasn’t the Bluesmobile.
I still wish they had gone with a 1992 Dodge Monaco, just to maintain the continuity.
If it happened, then there’s absolutely some Hollywood-grade tax write-off shenanigans involved and everyone made out like, well, bandits. W
You thought part II was awful? Wait until you see part III. (But don’t waste your time.)
Someday someone will unearth the original “Smokey is the Bandit” cut and it will all make sense.
I am not sure even that would make sense.
But Jackie Gleason pretending to be Burt (maybe)? That might be fun.
From what I’ve read it would make significantly less sense.
I watched about 40 seconds of that on cable once about 25 years ago, and noped right the fuck out of that shit.
the same reason (rentals allegedly ordered without air conditioning) has been given for all the 100+ dodge police cars wrecked in the Blues Brothers chase scene.
I wouldn’t believe either one without documentation.
The cop cars wrecked in the Blues Brothers were mostly retired California Highway Patrol cars. It’s very clear watching the movie that all of the cars that were wrecked were 5+ years old at the time of filming, and I’ve even seen a photo of a car transporter full of retired CHP Monacos on their way to filming.
Yeah, those were not new cars being wrecked in BB. They all had serious miles on them. SCMODS or not.
In the very early 90s we had a foreign exchange student from Germany named Fabien. He bought one of these for $100. That thing couldn’t get out of its own way, handled like it was gonna derail, and got terrible mileage but it also seemed to be indestructible. We used that car as a skateboard ramp, bicycle ramp, and seemlingly spent more time on the roof and hood than we did inside the car but it never showed a sign of it. When he went back to Germany he left the car painted from bumper to bumper with all sorts of random stuff but no dents.
AC is a must to a lot of people renting cars, maybe they thought it was worth more to just scrap the “old” stuff and actually get AC?
True, but how you could you “forget” to order A/C on a fleet of cars? Anything is possible but it just seems suspect.
You’d be surprised how dumb companies can be (actually I’m sure you wouldn’t). If that IS what happened, there’s probably everybody/anybody/nobody to blame. We had a similar situation with my fleet (before I got here, natch), and while it’s regrettable and stupid and we all have to live with it, it wasn’t really a single person’s fault, per se. But if there WERE a person who screwed the pooch 40+ years ago resulting in a bunch of Smokey Pontiacs, and they didn’t take it to the grave, I hope the truth comes out here via a surviving family member!
Don’t discount that some people are very dumb.
Today is a FANTASTIC day to make that observation!
Yep. Somehow more than half are below average.
Like you just said, “Anything is possible”. And I’ve been known to forget to mark things on important papers.
The truth is that Oprah used a converted Jewish Space Laser to go back in time.
And she, (knowing the future of Pontiac) gifted them to the movie producers.
Some sort of tax write off or something…
I KNEW IT!!!
Col Lingus is MTG? It’s making sense now.
Another fun fact.
When Oprah went back in time, she also discovered Dr. Phil selling Yugos
at a now defunct Pontiac dealer.
And Tom Cruise working as a security guard at the Texas State Fair.
True story!
America! What a country…
This new learning amazes me, Sir Lingus. Explain to me again how sheep’s bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
You know, the Dr. Phil part actually seems somewhat plausible, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.