how many cars did thwy use in smokey and the bandit movies

And couple things which were said and confirmed by everyone is how seven of the Trans-Ams got completely destroyed, not just while filming some heavy stunts like famous river jump, but also some minor stunts like car crashing through all the mail boxes. Over the years some fans managed to find and ask people who worked on the film or just watched the filming about all this, and the answer which they most often got was how there were eight 1977 special edition Trans-Ams and about the same number (although some said ten) of police cars. Before his death, Burt Reynolds said in interview how they used twelve Trans-Ams and how most of them got destroyed during filming.

Some like Hal Needham gave conflicting reports about them only using three or five 1977 Trans-Ams and few police cars. Ever since the film's release, there were so many different rumors about exact number of cars used during filming and what happened to them later, even some official sources like Wikipedia often got their info wrong.

How many cars did thwy use in smokey and the bandit movies