What 1971 cult film follows a primer-gray 1955 Chevy racing a Pontiac GTO across the United States?

The 1971 cult film about a primer-gray 1955 Chevrolet racing a Pontiac GTO across America is Two-Lane Blacktop.

Directed by Monte Hellman, the film stars singer-songwriters James Taylor and Dennis Wilson as the unnamed Driver and Mechanic. Their stripped-down 1955 Chevrolet 150 two-door sedan challenges Warren Oates’s character, GTO, in a cross-country race where the prize is the loser’s car, or “pinks.”

The movie is less a conventional racing story than a spare road film about movement, isolation, and identity. Its long stretches of highway, minimal dialogue, and naturalistic performances helped give it an unusual, existential tone. Filming took place across the American Southwest in 1970 before the film’s 1971 release.

It is often grouped with Vanishing Point and Easy Rider, but it is not either film. Two-Lane Blacktop gradually became a cult classic despite its weak initial commercial performance, and the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2012.