The Untold Truth Of Smokey And The Bandit

May 2024 ยท 2 minute read

To modern viewers, the very premise of the film seems a little weird. Two rich guys want to serve classic Coors Banquet Beer at a party. Instead of just buying some, they seek out legendary figure Bo "Bandit" Darville and offer him $80,000 to get 400 cases of beer from Texarkana, Texas, to Atlanta, Georgia, in 28 hours. It's kind of silly.

Except it wasn't silly in 1977, because, as Vinepair reports, you really couldn't get Coors beer east of the Mississippi. In fact, this remained the case until 1986. Coors was a regional product of Colorado, and it wasn't pasteurized and contained no preservatives, which made shipping it beyond certain geographical limitations without a decline in quality impossible. Rather than deal with the headaches of spoiled beer, Coors simply didn't extend its distribution eastward beyond the Mississippi River. The New York Times notes that the lack of availability helped make Coors a legendary beer and that people actually did smuggle it.

The time limit is what gives the plot of the movie its tension. Snowman and Bandit can only win the bet if they exceed the speed limit the whole way, so they agree that Bandit will drive the flashy sports car to distract the cops (aka the "Smokies" in CB trucker lingo), while Snowman slips past unnoticed. According to Film School Rejects, it is actually possible to do the round-trip within the time limit at about 65 miles per hour.

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