SHAAB, ISRAEL — In this small village in the north of Israel, roughly halfway between the Mediterranean and the Sea of Galilee, tan buildings are clustered on a terraced hillside. At the edge of town, where a lush olive grove at the foot of a sharp ridge meets a dusty paved road, there’s a car rarely seen in the Middle East: a 1978 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am.

It belongs to Ali Hebi, 30, who is known as Ali Trans Am to his online friends and followers. He bought the car for the same reason as many others who have tracked down a specific model: He saw it in a movie and had to have one. The film, of course, was “Smokey and the Bandit.”

Mr. Hebi was an impressionable 17-year old at the time, and in his case, it was the Burt Reynolds character of Bandit, memorable for his dark mustache and cowboy hat almost as much as for the black Trans Am he drove, who planted the seed.

Mr. Hebi said he found the car a more than a decade ago in Tel Aviv, where it had made its way from the United States. Three years ago he added a ’74 Trans Am to his small fleet as well.