Breaker, breaker
Canadian man’s Trans Am lives Smokey and Bandit dream
Breaker, breaker, good buddy. You got a Bandit coming up on your backside. Good golly — we got a convoy … Shades of the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit — the classic chase of Bo ‘Bandit’ Darville with Burt Reynolds driving a thennew black 1977 Pontiac Trans Am pursued by Sheriff Buford T. Justice with Jackie Gleason at the wheel of a slowly disintegrating police cruiser.
In the classic 1970s car chase film, the Trans Am was a decoy car to deflect police attention from a beer-laden transport truck making a speedy run between Texarkana, Texas and Atlanta, Ga., with Cledus ‘Snowman’ Snow played by Jerry Reed doing the trucking.
The film spawned a cult following, along with two sequel films and a television series.
Calgary Trans Am owner David Holmes has just returned from the annual Bandit Run — a weeklong car cruise that takes place in the U.S. The convoy includes a replica of the Snowman’s line- haul transport truck, a replica of the Buford T. Justice Smokey police car and over 100 classic Pontiac Trans Ams, Firebirds and other cars.
The first Bandit Run took place in 2007, the 30th anniversary of the release of the movie. Holmes joined his first Bandit Run in May of 2009. He has been on every Bandit Run since.
He had learned about the event while surfing the Internet and was waffling on a decision to go after a brush with colon cancer caused him to change his outlook on life.
“I had been a procrastinator all my life, but the cancer changed things. They caught it in time so I dodged a bullet. Having a new lease on life, I said: ‘To hell with it, I can’t afford it but I’m going anyway.’ ”
The first Bandit Run in 2007 followed the original route of Smokey and the Bandit starting in Texarkana and ending in Atlanta. 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.
That event was covered by The New York Times and two television networks. Runs now take a different route each year. Until 2014, David was the only Canadian on the tour. The Bandit Run routes the car has been on are:
2009 — Branson, Mo., to Braselton, Ga.
2010 — Braselton, Ga., to Orlando, Fla.
2011 — Lincoln, Neb. to Braselton, Ga.
2012 — Texarkana, Texas, to Braselton, Ga.
2013 — Lincoln, Neb. to Golden, Colo.
2014 — Carlyle, Penn., to Myrtle Beach, S.C.
2015 — Albuquerque, N.M, to Dallas, Texas
The car is driven to the start and from the finish back to Calgary each year, a drive of up to five days each way.
This May, Holmes completed his seventh Bandit Run with his ‘Bandit’ Trans Am. This year’s rally followed Route 66 from Albuquerque to Dallas.
The event also marked 38 years of David’s ownership of his 1977 Pontiac Trans Am. 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.
He was a 23-year-old accounting clerk for a Calgary-based oil company when he set out to buy his dream car, which would be his first new car.
“I wanted a Corvette and I had an uncle and cousin with a Pontiac Buick dealership in Virden, Man.,” he recalls. “My cousin said he could get me a Corvette but told me the new Special Edition Trans Am might be more interesting.”
Holmes ordered the car over the phone in the fall of 1976. It would be black with the gold Special Edition Trans Am Firebird decals and a red interior. The car would be equipped with the 400-cubic-inch (6.6 litre) V8 engine, automatic transmission, eight track tape deck and removable see-through hatch roof panels. It cost $8,900.
Pontiac Trans Am production was delayed because of a strike at the Hurst company that made the removable roof panels. Holmes finally picked his car up on the May long weekend in 1977. The Smokey and the Bandit film was released at the same time and it would be the second-highest grossing film that year.
David’s car was identical to the movie car driven by Burt Reynolds except the movie car had a black interior. “The car gets lots of looks and plenty of thumbs up,” David says, looking back on decades of driving his ‘Bandit.’ “Truckers in the U.S. are particularly familiar with it because of the movie. There’s all kinds of CB chatter about the Bandit cars when we are on the runs.”
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. He immediately bought an SUV and started parking the aging Trans Am for the winters.
In 2004, he treated his gently rusting car to a full restoration — done in six weeks near Edmonton for $12,000.
“The car was a terrible mess and I was embarrassed to drive it. I borrowed the money and got it done.”
The car now has travelled approximately 380,000 kilometres on its original engine with over 65,000 kilometres doing the Bandit Runs.
David 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.
He recalls one experience with his Trans Am on the 2012 Bandit Run when travelling to Texarkana, from Independence, Mo. He was at the end of a line of three Trans Ams in slow traffic crossing into Arkansas. An Arkansas Highway Patrol officer going the other way suddenly put on his emergency lights and did a U-turn to pull him over.
“He looked like a stereotypical southern cop and I didn’t know what to think,” Holmes said.
The police officer leaned into the car and said: “Y’all weren’t doin’ nothin’ wrong. I just wanna picture.” The photos of that encounter are now part of his history with the car.
“The car has been the central focus of my social life,” David says. “I look forward to the Bandit Run every year and attending car shows and cruises in summer with the Calgary Firebird Club.” He is the club president. It would seem that David’s long-ago purchase of his Bandit TA was an excellent investment. Pristine restored examples sell for as much as $75,000. The Bandit Trans Am promotion car, which was given to Burt Reynolds when Smokey and the Bandit was released in 1977, sold at auction last December for US$480,000.
For more information, go to thebanditrun.com