2025-08-14-posts.md 2.4 KB
title: Cannonball Run slug: cannonball-run description: Today I learned that the Cannonball record was broke again during Covid. <!--- authors:
- name: David Windham title: Something Else url: https://davidawindham.com image_url: https://davidawindham.com/wp-content/themes/daw/img/opengraph_image.jpg --> tags: [movies] image: https://davidawindham.com/wp-content/themes/daw/img/opengraph_image.jpg hide_table_of_contents: true ---
Today I learned that the Cannonball record was broke again during Covid.
The dive started with a conversation about analog vs. digital dashboards in cars which got me to thinking about Jackie Chan's Subaru and Mitsubushi in The Cannonball Run movies. The first thing I noticed is that both movies have almost exactly the same intro so I laid em on top of one another.
I remember doing a bit of a dive on the race after watching a documentary on Will Wright, The SIMs game designer who previously held the record. I also watched the doc on the fellas who broke it again in the early 2000s, but yesterday I learned that it was broken several more times during COVID because of the lack of traffic. Needless to say, there is a seemingly endless supply of trivia related to The Cannonball Run movies[^1] and[^2] the race[^3].
Here's a quick list of other factoids on em:
- Enter the Dragon company produced it
- producer of The Godfather is in it
- directed by Smokey and the Bandit writer
- fella who invented the race wrote the movie
- final appearance of The Rat Pack
- stars Terry Bradshaw, Joe Theismann, and Sid Ceasar?
- features Peter Fonda wearing the same outfit as Easy Rider
- the list here is pretty fairly endless
We talked about it a bit last night and it's just fun movies. I can just imagine the fellas sitting around a table in New York guessing how fast they could make it to Los Angeles and then throwing down bets on it. Likely more art imitating real life than we'll ever know.
[^1]: The Cannonball Run - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cannonball_Run [^2]: Cannonball Run II - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Run_II [^3]: Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Baker_Sea-to-Shining-Sea_Memorial_Trophy_Dash