If you were around in 1977, you know about the iconic movie “Smokey and the Bandit.”
Burt Reynolds and Sally Field led sheriff Buford T. Justice, played by Jackie Gleason, on a wild chase across the South.
People loved the characters and they loved The Bandit’s car. It was a 1977 Pontiac Trans Am, and it became an instant classic for car lovers.
A few years before he died in 2018, Burt Reynolds bought a Trans Am and had it restored to look just like the one in the movie. His friend Gene Kennedy, owner of Bandit Movie Cars of Florida in Palmetto, restored the car.
“He wanted decal placement, radios, the Pace CB, all those kinds of things to be just like it was in the movie so that when somebody saw the car it was correct,” says Kennedy.
In his later years, the car was with Reynolds for personal appearances. Kennedy’s company took the Trans Am, along with Smokey’s car, to car shows all over the country.
