This is one of my favorite Burt Reynolds movie. Its a classic. Growing up and living in south Mississippi, I can really identify with all aspects of this movie. I think we all could use a little "shaky puddin".
I agree it's a good Burt Reynolds movie. I like the car. The funny thing is I think those Ford LTDs came with an auto transmission. But in the movie, they show Reynolds shifting a manual transmission car. So I guess it's implied that was specially made for him by the federal agents. Yet when he pulls up to his parents' house, it looks like he's shifting an automatic transmission car into park.
shareI have an answer! There were a couple of cars that he used in that movie. ONE OF THEM really was torn up when he landed on the sand barge. The stunt driver was supposed to land on the sand but timing was off and he hit the edge. They used the scene and wrote in something about it.
I think I remember them saying that he had one auto and one standard transmission.
Well, the interior of Gator's car is blue, the reason being I imagine, that they ordered a bunch of them in blue to be the police cars, with blue interiors, and then picked a few out to paint brown, or modify in other ways. In car action movies, they are never going to have just one or two of the main cars used, because they tear so many up during filming, and they can't just stop in the middle of a movie to go find another one.
Watching the movie again, and stopping it, you can see different damage, and slight different trim on different cars (the tiny chrome trim on the doors comes and goes like the 4 speed transmission does, as well as a welded-on bar on the front bumper of one of the cars used.
It would not be surprising to find they went through a dozen or more brown Fords making this movie. In Smoky and the Bandit, half of the Trans Ams used had 4 speeds, but they were trying to shoot around this in the movie, the same way they were trying to shoot around the auto cars in White Lightning.