Pontiac Trans Am Bandit Pickup Truck CGI Looks Like It Was Meant to Be

It was 1977 when Smokey and the Bandit hit the silver screen, boosting the popularity of the Pontiac Trans Am forever. Basically, the muscle car was used to distract the police while a truck loaded with 400 cases of bootleg Coors beer had to get from Texas to Atlanta. To this day, people continue to come up with Smokey and the Bandit-inspired builds, be they real or virtual as is the case with this pickup truck.

The Poncho in question was a second-generation Trans Am, which got turned into a character for the movie, as explained by director Hal Needham. Having been a stuntman who chose to move to the said position with this motion picture, Needham turned the second-generation Trans Am into a character, as he stated back in the day, which explains why such a large number of aficionados fell in love with the gold-over-black color scheme featuring a bird on the hood.

Note that the Trans Am go-faster package was introduced for the original iteration of the Pontiac Firebird, being named after the eponymous racing series. With its sharp 1970s redesign, which included four rectangular headlights and the said color scheme, the 1977 Trans Am instantly caught the emerging director’s eye when he was seeking a hero car for the movie. And we can say the same about this virtual truck “Bandit”.

The idea of this rendering is to have Bo “Bandit” Darville (Burt Reynolds) hooning the pickup truck in a way that keeps the cops busy, so Cledus “Snowman” Snow (Jerry Reed) can get the booze to its destination.

The truck part of the pixel stunt is provided by the 2014 Silverado Cheyenne concept that Chevrolet never put into productionโ€”this is part of the now-extinct road-biased performance truck breed, which has been replaced by off-road-savvy go-fast trucks from Detroit’s Big Three.

It mixes a serious diet involving carbon fiber with bits lifted off the Camaro Z/28 (Brembo carbon-ceramic brakes, wheels, and hood vent extractor), while sporting a 420 hp 6.2L V8 in a single-cab, short bed lightweight configuration.

The pickup gets a full Smokey and the Bandit makeover, which goes from the front fascia (we get to see those lights!) to the wheels and the livery.

Crazy? More like craved…

Graphic designer Jim (aka jlord8), who came up with the machine, calls this the silliest Photoshop job he did over the years and this is an enthusiast who recently gave a Viper ACR an off-road treatment. Then again, we can’t agree with that adjective.

That’s because people seem to be crazy for Smokey and the Bandit trucks in real life. And one of the best examples comes from this 2021 Chevy Silverado Crew Cab RST build. Having debuted at last year’s SEMA show, the project, which was built over in Texas by Legendary Concepts and Saleen, the pop-culture-themed truck sold for an amazing $286,000 during a Barrett-Jackson auction held earlier this year.

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