A car delivery driver, Kowalski (Barry Newman), arrives in Denver, Colorado late Friday night with a black Chrysler Imperial. The delivery service clerk, Sandy (Karl Swenson), urges him to get some rest, but Kowalski insists on getting started with his next assignment to deliver a white 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T 440 Magnum to San Francisco by Monday. Before leaving Denver, Kowalski pulls into a biker bar parking lot around midnight to buy Benzedrine pills to stay awake for the long drive ahead. He bets his dealer, Jake (Lee Weaver), that he will get to San Francisco by 3:00 pm "tomorrow", even though the delivery is not due until Monday. (Distance between the towns is approximately 1,200 miles (1,900Â km) by road).
Kowalski is a Medal of Honor Vietnam War veteran and former race car driver and motorcycle racer. He is also a former police officer, who was dishonorably discharged in retaliation for preventing his partner from raping a young woman. Haunted by the surfing death of his girlfriend, Vera, Kowalski now exists on adrenaline.
Driving west across Colorado, Kowalski is pursued by two motorcycle police officers who try to stop him for speeding. Recalling his days as a motorcycle racer, he forces one officer off the road and eludes the other officer by jumping across a dry creek bed. Later, the driver of a Jaguar E-Type convertible[3] pulls up alongside Kowalski and challenges him to a race. After the Jaguar driver nearly runs him off the road, Kowalski overtakes him and beats the Jaguar to a one-lane bridge, causing the Jaguar to crash into the river. Kowalski checks to see if the driver is okay, then takes off, with police cars in hot pursuit.
Kowalski drives across Utah and into Nevada, with the police unable to catch him. During the pursuit, Kowalski listens to radio station KOW, which is broadcasting from Goldfield, Nevada. A blind black disc jockey at KOW, Super Soul (Cleavon Little), listens to the police radio frequency and encourages Kowalski to evade the police. Super Soul seems to understand Kowalski and seems to see and hear Kowalski's reactions. With the help of Super Soul, who calls Kowalski "the last American hero", Kowalski gains the interest of the news media, and people begin to gather at the KOW radio station to offer their support.
During the police chase across Nevada, Kowalski finds himself surrounded and heads into the desert. After he blows a left front tire and becomes lost, Kowalski is helped by an old prospector (Dean Jagger) who catches snakes in the desert for a Pentecostal Christian commune. After Kowalski is given fuel, the old man redirects him back to the highway. There, he picks up two homosexual hitchhikers stranded en route to San Francisco with a "Just Married" sign in their rear window. When they attempt to hold him up at gunpoint, Kowalski throws them out of the car and continues on.
Saturday afternoon, a vengeful off-duty highway patrolman and some local racist thugs break into the KOW studio and assault Super Soul and his engineer. Near the California state line, Kowalski is helped by a hippie biker, Angel (Timothy Scott), who gives him pills to help him stay awake. Angel's girlfriend (Gilda Texter), who rides a motorcycle nude, recognizes Kowalski and shows him a collage she made of newspaper articles about his police career. Kowalski suspects that Super Soul's broadcast is now being directed by the police to entrap him. Confirming that the police are indeed waiting at the border, Angel helps Kowalski get through the roadblock with the help of an old air raid siren and a small motorbike with a red headlight strapped to the top of the Challenger, simulating a police car. Kowalski finally reaches California by Saturday 7:12 pm. He calls Jake the dealer from a payphone to reassure him that he still intends to deliver the car on Monday.
On Sunday morning, California police, who have been tracking Kowalski's movements on an electronic wall-map, set up a roadblock with two bulldozers in the small town of Cisco, where Kowalski will be passing. A small crowd gathers at the roadblock. As Kowalski approaches at high speed, he smiles as he crashes into the bulldozers in a fiery explosion. As firemen work to put out the flames, the crowd slowly disperses.[4]
What state does this take place in?
Nevada