This comedy movie brings Burt Reynolds, Sir Roger Moore, Farrah Fawcett, Dom DeLuise, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, and an all-star cast to the starting line of the ultimate auto race, a madcap cross-country scramble that roars full-speed ahead. This action-comedy was inspired by an actual event: the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, an anything goes, all-stops-out, and very much illegal, competition that has grown to legendary proportions within the last ten years.

The plot of a cross-country road race was based on an actual event, the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, organized by Brock Yates to protest the 55 mile per hour speed limit then in effect in the United States The Cannonball was named for Erwin G. "Cannonball" Baker, who in the roaring 1920s, rode his motorcycle across the country. Many of the characters are based on ruses developed by real Cannonball racers over the several years that the event was run.