by Bo Durban
January 27, 2022

3 Smokey And The Bandit related CB radios in one ad...

Almost all of the CBs used in the movie Smokey And The Bandit were Pace brand CB radios. Pace brand was owned by Pathcom, Inc located in Harbor City, California. Pathcom, Inc was dissolved in 1985. I am not sure what happened to them after that. Here is a picture of one of their ads back in the mid-70s. It caught my attention because it was advertising 3 CB models that all had ties to the movie...

The Pace CB-143 was offered as a prize to the extras that showed up for the filming of SATB at the Lakewood Fairgrounds. I am not sure how many of these CBs they gave away, but if anyone here was lucky enough to be at the fairgrounds Sept 23-29, 1976, we would like to hear from you. Especially if you won a CB.

The Pace CB-144 was used in the Trans Ams that Burt Reynolds and Sally Fields rode in as well as the stunt car used to "drive through people's back yards". You can catch glimpses of it mounted to the dash to the right of the steering column along with a Pace Scan 10-4U. It is also identified by its microphone with the wide rectangular logo. Most often you can identify it by the back of the microphone, it has a flat back surface and 3 screw holes.

The Pace CB-145 was used in Sheriff Buford T Justice car. You can see a side view of this CB radio in the Sherriff's car at the end of the movie when Bandit is telling the Sherriff to "look over his left shoulder". It has a Pace Scan 10-4U sitting on top of it. This CB uses a microphone with a round ((P)) logo on it. You can recognize the back of it because it has distinct angles in it and it has 4 mounting screws.

Some keen eyed observers will notice that sometimes Sheriff Justice uses a white microphone. Note that when he does that he is talking to his fellow officers using a Motorola brand microphone on his 2-way radio. For all the CB communications he uses the black Pace brand microphone.