Video: Bandit Run 2017 Makes a Pit Stop in Tupelo

TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) –If you felt the ground shake in Tupelo Monday afternoon, it wasn’t an earthquake, just the rumble of a couple hundred V-8 engines.

Over 200 Trans-Ams and Firebirds are “Eastbound and Down” from Texarkana, Arkansas to Atlanta for the 11th Annual “Bandit Run”.

The week-long muscle car caravan celebrates the movie classic “Smokey and the Bandit”.

Monday afternoon it pulled in for a pit stop at the Tupelo Automobile Museum.

For muscle car enthusiast the appeal of the Firebird is pretty simple.

“The black and gold Trans-Am is not only iconic of the movie, but the features, the body lines, and the mechanics of the car in and of itself, for me and a lot of enthusiasts, it was a car ahead of its time.”

2017 is the 40th Anniversary of “Smokey and the Bandit”.

It was the second-highest grossing movie of 1977, coming in behind “Star Wars”.