The names of the four previous 1970s Roger Corman produced New World Pictures productions that this movie featured scenes from, which were mainly action car stunt sequences, and functioned as a form of stock footage in a sense for the film, were two titles from 1976 and two titles from 1977, they being [in approx. order]: Eat My Dust (1976), La polizia li vuole morti (1976), Inferno in Florida (1977) and Attenti a quella pazza Rolls Royce (1977).
Director Charles B. Griffith said of this movie in an interview: ''Roger [producer Roger Corman] hired me . . . in 1977 or '78. It all started with a news broadcast. The police were complaining that Eat My Dust (1976), and other pictures like it, inspired kids to chase down the freeways and challenge the cops and run other cars off the road. There were lots of people blamed for this, and Sheriff Pritches called this 'Car Wars'. As soon as the newscast was over, the phone rang, and it was Roger. 'I want you to do a picture called 'Car Wars',' he said, 'using the stunts from five old New World pictures'. I wrote a script which wound up being called 'Wham Bam, Merci, Madame'. It was insane and used all the stunts in different ways. But Roger hated the script and never did the picture. In 1983, however, he called again and offered me a lot more money than he ever had before. I guess I got flattered, and I went ahead and did it. He had Max Apple in Texas go ahead and write a script around all the wrecks and chases. But Max wasn't allowed to see the footage. It was too expensive to rent a Movieola and send Max prints or anything else, so he had only vague descriptions written down on what the stunts were-and nothing worked. So I made a lot of changes in it, and that made Roger angry. He tried to cut it just to the action of the old pictures, but he couldn't, because he needed all the distribution rights. Then he cut all the motivations and all the character development. It was a mess, a jumbled mess!''.
Screenwriter Max Apple has said of this film in an interview with 'The New York Times' published on 17th June 1984: ''I wrote 'Smokey Bites the Dust' for Roger Corman in 1980. ''It was a car-crash movie. They wanted four or five crashes, of which they already had the footage. It was more bricklaying than writing.''
The movie is set in an American province called ''Cyco County'' in Arkansas, USA which is fictional and does not exist in real life.
The film's director Charles B. Griffith said of this movie in an August 2004 interview with Aaron W. Graham of the 'Senses of Cinema' website: ''Not my title, believe me. It was to cash in on both Il bandito e la madama (1977) and Eat My Dust (1976). I asked Jim Nicholson one time why they did things like that. That people would think they were sequels or something. He said, 'That's the idea! People will come to see a well-known picture'.''