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  1. Five of the best car movies of all time
  2. Bullitt, Steve McQueen's Mustang
  3. The Gumball Rally, The original and best
  4. The Fast and the Furious, Not exactly classic
  5. Smokey and the Bandit, Trucks trump cars here
  6. The Italian Job, Mini stars

Smokey and the Bandit, Trucks trump cars here

Burt Reynolds stars in arguably the defining 1970s car chase comedy film, credited along with Moonrunners as inspiring American TV chase series The Dukes of Hazzard. A rich Texan is looking for a truck driver stupid enough to indulge in a bit of bootlegging by hauling some Coors beer to Georgia for him. A few had tried and failed, when up steps legendary trucker Bo 'Bandit' Darville (Reynolds), who agrees to haul 400 cases from Texas to Georgia for the princely sum of $80,000. Bandit recruits a mate to drive the truck, while he gets himself a black Pontiac Trans Am to drive as a blocker car when the inevitable resistance comes.

And come it does, in the form of Sherriff Buford T. Justice (allegedly the real name of a Sherriff known to Reynolds' father), who basically chases Bandit and the truck for half the film. Interestingly, however, the reason Sherriff Justice is chasing Bandit has nothing to do with the beer - and neither he nor any of his cohorts are ever aware of the illegal Coors. It's more of a personal vendetta, involving a girl. What else?

During filming, five identical black 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans Ams were used and rebuilt when necessary. It's rumoured that one was totalled during a river jumping stunt. All five were T/A versions, which packed a 6.6-litre V8 under the bonnet generating a massively disappointing 200bhp, though 325lb.ft of torque meant it still moved a bit through the gears. Its 0-60mph time, however, was a languid 9.3 seconds... from a 6-6 V8! Muscle car? Hmm. At least it sounded good.

And talking about sound, Smokey and the Bandit sits alongside Robocop as one of the most notoriously badly dubbed-for-TV movies of all time. Versions airing on network TV in the early '80s had any word remotely resembling a swear re-dubbed for something else. Most noteworthy was the exchanging of the curse “sumbitch” (a contraction of “son of a bitch”) for “scum bum”. In the UK, leading lady Sally Field was deemed to be wearing jeans that were too tight in one scene too, so it was cut for British TV broadcasts.

Mark Nichol

Tuesday November 18