Goofs

The damage on the various cars isn't consistent in the film chronology. Most obvious is the scene in which the green Mustang and black Charger are playing demolition derby in the construction site - compare the condition of the Dodge at the end of the battle to when it flies off the overpass.

In the pile-up on the freeway, the same yellow Cadillac hits the pile twice.

In the sequence where the girls in the van give Beutell a spray of the fire extinguisher, the road they are on changes from a two-lane road to a four-lane highway between shots.

When Terry's wife and daughters wish him good luck at the race, he is seen wearing sunglasses that appear and disappear between shots.

At the highway pile-up, some cars explode and burn from one scene then appears unaffected by the fire; some cars explode randomly without explanation.

As Messer's DeTomaso Pantera reaches 160 mph, a Dodge Polara police car was able to block the path the sports car and maintain pace at the same speed when in reality is impossible for a sedan built in the 1970s.

The crash and death of the German driver could not have been printed in the newspaper and been delivered to the airliner in flight.

The radio while the girl is driving the Corvette is not a Corvette radio and it is not shown in a Corvette console.

In scenes where vehicles are on rural roads and speedometers read over 100 mph, the immediate road shot afterwards show the vehicles are only traveling about 35 mph.

During the chase scene in the bridge construction site, Redman and the cop are driving from the right side of the car instead of left, but this does not necessarily count as a factual mistake, since this was a fault of the editing process where the film was mirrored in a few shots.

At the highway pile-up, none of the vehicles involved in a collision has a driver in it and appears empty when it explodes.

After one of Cade's motorcycle henchmen punctured a hole in the fuel tank of Cannonball's Mustang, as fuel takes longer to dry than water, there is no evidence of leaking fluid within the car as the ground appears dry.

Just before Wolf Messer's DeTomaso Pantera explode during a police chase, instead of the car exploding, a trailer disguised as a low-quality mock-up of the sports car can be instead seen being trailered by the Dodge Polara police car.

The race ends in Manhattan, New York City, and the girl's van maneuvers through Manhattan traffic. They cut down a tiny street named "Harlem Pl.," which is actually Harlem Place Alley in Los Angeles, where the majority of "Cannonball" was filmed.

If the TV crew was able to trace the routes of the competitors, also witness the deaths of Zippo and Wolf but were unable to give Terry McMillan's Chevy Blazer a mention; so weren't were aware that he might have been cheating throughout the race before they crossed the finish line.

As the highway motorists collide onto other crashed vehicles without slowing down, creating a carnage; Sandy and the van passengers are able to maneuver through traffic whilst the motorists dimly continue the carnage.

After Zippo was shot dead by Sharpe who then was inadvertently killed by Beutell as he got shocked into losing control and sideswiped into Sharpe's parked car, causing it to crush him underneath; the traffic goes quickly from sparse to busy in a short space of time.

The TV reporter in the helicopter identifies the black Dodge Charger taking part in the race as a '71 model when it was in fact a '68.