burt reynolds smokey and the bandit trans am

BURT REYNOLDS SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT TRANS AM MOVIE
BURT REYNOLDS SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT TRANS AM DRIVER
BURT REYNOLDS SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT TRANS AM FULL

It would seem that David’s long-ago purchase of his Bandit Trans Am was an excellent investment. “I look forward to the Bandit Run every year and attending car shows and cruises in summer with the Calgary Firebird Club.” “The car has been the central focus of my social life,” David says. During one Bandit Run, an Arkansas Highway Patrol officer stopped David Holmes and his 1977 Special Bandit Edition Pontiac Trans Am because he wanted to take a picture. I just wanna picture.” The photos of that encounter are now part of his history with the car. The police officer leaned into the car and said: “Y’all weren’t doin’ nothin’ wrong. “He looked like a stereotypical southern cop and I didn’t know what to think,” Holmes said. An Arkansas Highway Patrol officer going the other way suddenly put on his emergency lights and did a U-turn to pull him over. Holmes was at the end of a line of three Trans Ams in slow traffic crossing into Arkansas. He recalls one experience with his Trans Am on the 2012 Bandit Run when travelling to Texarkana, from Independence, Mo. Article content A lineup of Special Edition Bandit Pontiac Trans Am cars at a Bandit Run. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

BURT REYNOLDS SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT TRANS AM MOVIE

Holmes has had some wonderful and funny experiences on the runs, and has met a great group of people who have a similar obsession with the movie and the car. Over 65,000 of those kilometres are from doing the Bandit Run. The car now has travelled approximately 380,000 kilometres on its original engine. “The car was a terrible mess and I was embarrassed to drive it,” Holmes remembers.

BURT REYNOLDS SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT TRANS AM FULL

In 2004, he treated his gently rusting car to a full restoration - done in six weeks near Edmonton for $12,000.

He immediately bought an SUV and started parking the aging Trans Am for the winters.

BURT REYNOLDS SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT TRANS AM DRIVER

The Trans Am was Holmes’ daily driver for the first 18 years until he slid it into his apartment garage door one slippery winter day. There’s all kinds of CB chatter about the Bandit cars when we are on the runs.” David Holmes’ 1977 Special Edition Bandit Pontiac Trans Am with the Cledus ‘Snowman’ Snow transport truck in Lincoln, Nebraska. are particularly familiar with it because of the movie. “The car gets lots of looks and plenty of thumbs up,” Holmes says, looking back on decades of driving his ‘Bandit.’ “Truckers in the U.S. “My cousin said he could get me a Corvette but told me the new Special Edition Trans Am might be more interesting.” “I wanted a Corvette and I had an uncle and cousin with a Pontiac Buick dealership in Virden, Man.,” he recalls. He was a 23-year-old accounting clerk for a Calgary-based oil company when he set out to buy his dream car, which was also his first new car. He ordered the car before the movie came out and without having any idea that the same model would be the star in the upcoming Smokey and the Bandit film. The event also marked 38 years of David’s ownership of his 1977 Pontiac Trans Am. David Holmes and his 1977 Special Bandit Edition Pontiac Trans Am at Mount Rushmore during a Bandit Run. This year’s rally followed Route 66 from Albuquerque to Dallas. This May, Holmes completed his seventh run with his ‘Bandit’ Trans Am. Holmes drives his Trans Am driven from Calgary to the start and finish of each cruise, and then back to Calgary each year – a drive of up to five days each way. The Bandit Run routes the car has been to over the past seven years include: Branson, Mo., to Braselton, Ga. Runs now take a different route each year and until 2014, David was the only Canadian on the tour. That event was covered by The New York Times and two television networks. As the 30 Trans Am classics participating that year headed east on the three-day trip, they were joined by Hot Rod Magazine and Automobile Magazine, with the convoy whizzing through Tupelo, Miss., toward Birmingham, Ala., and then on to Atlanta. The first Bandit Run in 2007 followed the original route of Smokey and the Bandit, starting in Texarkana, Texas, and ending in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Burt reynolds smokey and the bandit trans am