Smokey and the Bandit episodes of the series. Needham saw an advertisement for the soon-to-be-released 1977 Pontiac Trans Am and knew right away that would be the Bandit's car, or, as Needham referred to it, a character in the movie. He contacted Pontiac and an agreement was made that four 1977 Trans Ams and two Pontiac LeMans 4-door sedans would be provided for the movie. The Trans Ams were actually 1976-model cars with 1977 front ends. (From 1970 to 1976, both the Firebird/Trans Am and Chevrolet Camaro had two round headlights, and in 1977, the Firebird/Trans Am was changed to four rectangular headlights, while
Smokey and the Bandit II felt that that it suffered badly in comparison to the original. It received an approval rating of 17% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 6 reviews. Roger Ebert gave it a 1 out of 4 stars and stated that there was "[in 1980] no need for this movie. That's true of most sequels, but it's especially true of 'Smokey and the Bandit II', which is basically just the original movie done again, not as well ... how can I say it's lazy when it has 50 trucks doing stunts in it? Because it takes a lot less thought to