The era of Smokey and the Bandit movies
Written by man on November 30th, 2009 in Other.
Those of us lucky enough to be around in the 70s when this fantastic car came out drool everytime we regard it. Imagine getting a vehicle from the factory with a 455 cubic inch engine in it!This vehicle kicked butt! Then if you did some work, like we did to ours, as in having the engine blue printed, balanced and a lot more, it probably did even better. Let’s just say it was doing miles better then one hp per cubic inch!
This was the era of Smokey and the Bandit movies. Good ole boy Burt Reynolds drove a black Trans Am in the flick and everyone and his uncle all of a sudden wanted one. Naturally, by that time the ones they were selling were watered down versions with no where near the power of the first ones.
Since we are not sure of the statute of limitations, let’s just say that any stories are presumed to start’Once upon A Time’.
One of our favorite stories is when we were getting onto sunrise road late one evening and a Camaro rolled up next to us and started revving his engine, well you can imagine the rest.Here was a poor soul who had not a clue of what was in store. Since we do not believe in street racing, it definitely was a good thing we were both going onto the entrance ramp. After we were satisfied that no one was on the parkway at that time of night, we let the Beast Out To Play. We never did see any more then his fading headlights.
One of the funniest moments was when we lived in upstate NY and my man went to the store to choose something up and this fellow in a Mustang 2 pulled up next to him and my hubby had fun ( hey, we are all titled often ). As Chuck tells it : You see at that time a local car dealer was running a TV spot featuring a Mustang two just destroying a Trans Am. So this gentleman pulls up next to me, gunning his engine for all he is’s worth. The light changes, he chirps his tires and flashes me an enormous smile as he takes off. Well, I idle away from the light,give it enough gas in first to drag even with him, then drop the hammer, lighting up both tires, throw 2nd, light them up again and then ease off. Drive down the road to the store.
When I come out of the store this bloke has finally got there and is waiting for me and says,’but the commercial claims Mustangs will beat the pants off the Trans Am.’ I terribly blithely replied,’Not this Trans Am!’
They don’t make them like this anymore. It’s sad when you concentrate on it! Those of us who lived and got raised in the age of the muscle automobiles, street rods, saturday night cruise nights were very,very lucky. I feel sorry for the youth of today that they missed out on all of this.
So what happened to that great 455 Trans Am, sadly the harsh upstate NY winters aren’t kind to automobiles and rust took the Trans Am from us. However, we did replace it - with a customized 1973 Vette, which we drove cross country to California, but that is a full nother story!
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