My understanding was that the '77 simply wasn't in production yet. The components were already in production. Not sure where the cars were converted or by who. But reportedly Needham had seen the ad for the not yet produced '77 and decided that would be the Bandit's car. The ad he saw was supposedly a '76 455 TA. PMD shipped the needed components and decals to their special projects engineer, John Callies, in California and his team converted it to the '77 appearance for the advertisement. It was reconverted to a '76 and PMD eventually sold it to a dealer. That car exists in the hands of a collector who discovered its history and connection to the movie and restored to look like the '77 as it did in the advertisement. I don't know if Callies had anything to do with converting the TAs given to Needham.
Mike Davis, if you are referring to the sound track sounding like a 4 spd car being shifted, the sounds of the cars in movies were often not the actual car seen on film. In the case of SATB, reportedly the sounds on the sound track were recorded from the famous '55 American Graffiti Chevy (also the Two Lane Blacktop).
Another story goes that the Bandit TA used a rocket booster to propel it over the creek. At least a couple websites repeat that claim.
Needham had done a promotional film for GM and used a hydrogen peroxide rocket to launch a pick-up truck over a 140 ft. wide canal for that dramatic jump.
I do not know when that was done or whether it was the first time Needham had done it.
Evel Knievel had used a steam rocket for his Snake Canyon jump around '74. So Needham surely had an idea about how it could be done.
Needham did put a rocket booster in a TA for the movie Hooper done a year after SATB. That car made a record setting movie jump but that TA was launched without a driver as I understand it (see quote to follow).
The Mulberry Creek jump was far shorter. I don't see any evidence that a rocket nozzle extends from the rear of the car. And the car only flies about 100 ft.
With all his experience, I'm sure Needham and the stunt driver Alan Gibbs would have easily figured how fast the car needed to go to make that jump.
Doubtful he needed a rocker booster to make it happen. Whether he needed a more powerful engine than the 400 in the TA coupled to the TH400, I sure don't know but personally I think it is unlikely.
Gibbs died in '88 so he isn't around to ask.
But this article in Variety magazine from '93 provides another Needham quote.
Stunt meister Hal Needham directed both films. “The big one (jump) that I did in ‘Hooper’ flew about 430 feet… We put that car across there with a 25,000 -horsepower rocket engine. But we didn’t have anybody in the car. It was empty.
“The one in ‘Smokey’ — the one Alan Gibbs did — he jumped about 60, 70 feet. But that was done with a souped-up engine, just with the power and speed of the car.”
I have no idea what distance they had available to get the TA up to speed before it hit the ramp. I just can't imagine that a 4 spd 455 would have been any better at achieving the speed than the auto trans 400. Souped-up? The TA engine was "souped-up" relative to most any other '76 factory engine. Is that what Needham meant? Was Needham able to acquire a NASCAR engine? Was the jump impossible without such an engine?
Interesting discussion.
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