| Coy "Cannonball" Buckman is a race driver-turned parolee, who signs on to compete in the Trans-Continental Road Race, a cross-country journey starting at the Santa Monica Pier and ending at a garage in New York City. This does not sit well with Coy's parole officer girlfriend Linda Maxwell, who is legally responsible for him and he could go back to prison for violating his parole. Fixing up Coy's red Pontiac Trans Am is his loyal pal Zippo Friedman, who decides to enter the race himself in a identical Trans Am and even dressing up like Coy to fool the cops. Coy's rival is Cade Redman, an embittered fellow racer, who is also tasked to take no-talent country singer Perman Waters and his mother Sharma Capri to New York to jump-start Perman's stalled career.Other participants in the race is eccentric European racing champ Wolfe Messer, driving a yellow DeTomaso Pantera, Jim and Maryann Crandell, a surfer couple racing in a silver Corvette owned by her father. Terry McMillan, who sheepishly uses sneak tactics to make it to New York without driving his orange Chevorlet Blazer, Beutell Morris, who uses the race as a ruse to help a rich couple deliver their Lincoln Continental to New York without a single scratch, and Sandy, driving a custom blue van with her two waitress friends, Judy and Ginny. What Coy does not know is that his gambler brother Bennie made a deal with mob boss Lester Marks to make sure Coy wins the race as Bennie is in heavy debt to them.Linda has no choice but to accompany Coy in the race, but eventually decides to leave her in Zippo's company, when Redman starts trying to run him off the road. Not long after, the dirty tricks begin to come into play: Bennie, with the help of his prison escapee friend Sharpe, secretly planted a bomb under Messer's Pantera, which explodes during a police pursuit in the desert and Redman shoots out a tire in Coy's Trans Am. He later beats up Sharpe, posing as a motorcycle cop pretending to stop Coy on a routine traffic stop, and confronts Redman at a roadside grocery store, where they wreck the entire establishment. Redman escapes the melee and shatters the headlights on Coy's car before taking off. That night, Coy notices the broken headlights and winds up totaling his car on a winding mountain road, but not after being loaned a green Ford Mustang by a pair of rural auto mechanics, who are big fans of him.Redman gets word that Coy is still in the race and is forced to call in more reinforcements to stop him. They mistake Zippo as Coy and beat him to a pulp, with Linda defeating most of the men with judo and karate moves. Coy shows up and learns from Linda that Zippo was actually driving the car that night when a young girl died, resulting in Coy's prosecution. Coy tells Linda that he took the fall for it because Zippo would have never survived in prison. Linda wants to ride with Coy again, for fear of her safety, but Coy says the race is almost over and they will be together soon. Other sub-plots include Jim's Corvette suffering from a damaged fan belt and after unsuccessful attempts to repair it, they try to steal one from a supermarket parking lot, only to be chased away by a suspicious cop and Sandy and her friends duping a pair of handsome patrolmen by having sex with them to avoid a speeding ticket.At this point, a half-crazed Redman notices Coy driving into the construction site of an unfinished bridge. He dumps Perman and Sharma out of the car and speeds after him. Coy manages to jump the bridge to the other side, but Redman's brakes give out and pummels down to a fiery death. Meanwhile, Sharpe plans to assassinate Coy using a sniper rifle, not knowing it is actually Zippo driving the car. Sharpe shoots Zippo through the head and loses control of the Trans Am, ejecting Linda in the process, and explodes. Beutell, distracted by the explosion, accidentally knocks down the car Sharpe was laying under, fatally crushing him. Jim and Maryann spot Linda lying on the road and to take her to a nearby hospital, but not after unintentionally causing a multi-car pile-up. At the hospital, the doctor tells them she will be okay and Jim thinks they should forget about the race and go home, but Maryann still wants to push forward, even though they might not win first place.Terry and his girlfriend Louisa are the first ones to arrive at the finish line, but are disqualified when she blabs that they left their celebratory champagne on the plane. The second one to arrive is Coy, who is greeted by Bennie, but the victory is cut short when a TV cameraman tells Coy about the pile-up, the other red Trans Am destroyed in the explosion, and that Linda was taken to the hospital. Coy learns the truth about the plan Bennie had all along, rips up his race ticket, and heads for the hospital, as a disappointed Lester and his bodyguard escort a doomed Bennie to Lester's limo, as Jim and Maryann arrive and end up the official winners of the race. At the hospital, Coy rushes to Linda's room and is relieved to see her alive, but badly injured, and the two lovingly embrace, as Beutell eventually delivers the now-wrecked Lincoln to the couple standing outside a downtown hotel. |
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