GM's Free Trans Am Deal for Burt Reynolds Ended After Executive Change

When a single film made both an actor and an automobile iconic, General Motors responded with a gesture as cinematic as the movie itself — a lifetime supply of new Pontiac Trans Ams delivered annually to Burt Reynolds. The arrangement lasted five years before a change in corporate leadership brought it to an abrupt and unceremonious end, not for financial reasons, but because the new president simply did not enjoy Reynolds' films. It is a small parable about how institutional memory is shorter than institutional power, and how personal taste, when seated in authority, can quietly undo what gen