1989 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Gta Coupe 2-door 5.0l on 2040-cars

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Burt Reynolds' vehicles up for auction at Barrett-Jackson

Burt Reynolds' influence on car culture cannot be overstated. Be it "Smokey and the Bandit" or "Cannonball Run," his films inspired a generation of car enthusiasts. He died a few weeks back from cardiac arrest at age 82. This weekend, four vehicles from Reynolds' personal collection — three Pontiacs and a Chevy — will go up for auction at Barrett-Jackson in Las Vegas. It seems Reynolds had plans to sell the cars before he passed. He even filmed a short teaser for the auction and planned to attend the event himself. Three of the cars are Pontiac Trans Ams. Two are re-creations of the cars he drove in "Bandit" and the film "Hooper." Both are 1978 models. The third Trans Am is from 1984 and was used to promote Reynolds' USFL team, the Tampa Bay Bandits. The fourth vehicle is a 1978 Chevy R30 pickup truck. It's styled like the truck he drove in "Cannonball Run." None of the vehicles were actually used in the movies. But they were registered in his name, making them far more legitimate than some other movie-inspired clones. It's unclear how many Bandit Trans Ams Reynolds has owned over the years. Another car connected to him sold for $450,000 back in 2014. His death is sure to drive the price of these new cars even higher. Related Video: Image Credit: Barrett-Jackson Celebrities Chevrolet Pontiac Auctions Truck Coupe pontiac trans am burt reynolds

Pontiac Aztek rises from the ashes of infamy in Firebird Trans Am guise

What if the Pontiac Aztek, one of the most widely ridiculed vehicles ever built, was reimagined with a little flair from one of the former brand’s more legendary cars? Well, it turns out that someone not only came up with that idea, but followed up on it. And so, we present to you the Pontiac Aztek Firebird Trans Am, uh, trim package? ItÂ’s not real, of course, but it comes from Abimelec Arellano, an Hermosillo, Mexico-based car designer with too much time on his hands who goes by the name Abimelec Design. Arellano redesigned the midsize SUVÂ’s wimpy front fascia to surprising success by simply adding widened fender flares and perhaps modernizing the headlights. He also went all-in embracing the AztekÂ’s abrupt, flattened rear end by removing the rear bumper lip, adding a slightly more aggressive rear spoiler to boot. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Elsewhere, the dominating and cheap-looking gray plastic under-cladding is gone in favor of body-color panels. Arellano also added some probably larger Pontiac Snowflake wheels with gold accents that really make them pop and play well against the signature Firebird decal dominating the hood. Commenters generally fall into one of two buckets. As one put it, “I never thought the Aztek could look this good.” Others implored Arellano to do a version with a T-top. Or as one Autoblog editor put it, “So it turns out the reason the Aztek was a laughingstock failure is that it didnÂ’t come in a Smokey and the Bandit Edition. Somewhere, a dude who got shouted down in a product-planning meeting years ago is vindicated.” Sold between 2001 and 2005, the Aztek arguably reached the pinnacle of its notoriety as the metaphor for the drab, underachieving life of Walter White in AMCÂ’s meth drama, “Breaking Bad.” It came equipped with a 3.4-liter V6 that made 185 horsepower and sent it through a four-speed automatic to the front wheels, with an all-wheel drive version also available. The Aztek may have the last laugh, especially if it gets a screaming chicken. “The fact it was a controversial design and didnÂ’t sell well will make it an object of curiosity from a historical standpoint many years from now,” McKeel Hagerty, president and CEO of classic-car insurer Hagerty Insurance, told Autoblog back in 2016.

There's a 'Knight Rider' movie in development

James Wan, who has directed films from the first "Saw" to "Aquaman," with "Furious 7" in between, and produced even more projects, is producing a new Knight Rider movie according to a report in Deadline. Just in case there's a reader who doesn't know, Knight Rider was one of the seminal trio of iconic-car shows from the 1980s, along with "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "Miami Vice." The series lasted 90 episodes that ran from 1982 to 1986, following the crime-fighting exploits of Michael Knight, a man who crusaded for justice after being shot in the face. Billionaire Walton Knight hired Michael to work with the Knight Foundation, where Michael helps develop the Knight Industries Two Thousand, a Pontiac Trans-Am with AI that can talk, drive more than 200 miles per hour, and could teach MI6's Q Branch about gadgetry. Collider described David Hasselhof's Michael Knight as "crimefighter by trade and wearing-a-leather-jacket-with-no-shirt-underneath innovator by hobby." The show made such an impression that there was a series spinoff called "Code of Justice," two TV movies in 1991 and 1994, a convention called KnightCon, and a series reboot on NBC that lasted for one season from 2008 to 2009, as well as stores full of action figures and models and literature, YouTube fan-made trailers and movies, and this wacky German-dubbed short "Knight Rider" film starring Hasselhoff. We don't know anything about the new movie's plot yet, other than that it's set in the present. T.J. Fixman, better known for now as a video game writer who worked on franchises like "Ratchet and Clank" and "Resistance: Fall of Man," has been attached to write, with a mandate to keep "the anti-establishment tone of the original." With matters still early in development there's no telling when the movie will hit theaters, and Wan's probably got his hands busy with the new MacGuyver reboot for CBS, anyway. Now that there's already been a Knight Industries 2000 and 3000, that gives us plenty of time to imagine — in a world where 200-mph hypercars powered by everything sprout like weeds and even Cannonballers are using military-like equipment — what would a Knight Industries Four Thousand possess? And would it be called KIFT? Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.