General Lee – The Car’s The Star

Yes, yes, we know we’ve already covered the Dodge Charger in this series but that was almost three years ago and besides, we’re focussing on just one single variant of the dominating Dodge this time around and one that was conspicuous by its absence in that initial article. Chris Pollitt’s top notch feature on the muscle bound Charger covered its best film roles but today we want to talk about its starring television work instead and the program that first introduced this big, burly brute to us when we were impressionable little kids with a love for all things fast and furious – a time way before that film series had even been conceived by the way. Yep, we’re talking about the 1980s and we’re talking about the General Lee.

The ’80s was a wonderful time to be a budding petrolhead with shows like Knightrider, Streethawk, The A-Team and The Fall Guy being spoon fed to us on a weekly basis and we must have seemed like eager chicks when mother returns to the nest, lapping it all up with a fervour that has frankly been unmatched since. It wasn’t just TV programmes either, Hollywood was at it too, giving us The Cannonball Run films, Back to the Future and the Smokey and the Bandit series, to name but a few, providing us with a steady stream of car chases, jumps, skids and explosions-a-plenty which we gladly hoovered up like a black lab that’s just discovered the open bag of kibble at the back of the larder. Having seen a rather tasty Charger up close and personal at the recent Car & Classic Auto Social cars and coffee meet our love for the model has been somewhat rekindled and so thoughts of them good ole’ boys Bo and Luke Duke – also known as The Dukes of Hazzard – resurfaced, settling at the top of our grey matter like freshly spilled fuel on a rain-soaked bit of blacktop.

Set in the fictional county of Hazzard, supposedly in rural Georgia in the deep south of America, the show, marketed as an action comedy series, follows the exploits of two cousins (the aforementioned Bo and Luke), as well as a handful of secondary characters including their other cousin Daisy and uncle Jessie. On parole for illegal booze moonshining they spend each episode thwarting the shady schemes of corrupt county commissioner Boss Hogg who would like nothing more than to see the boys in jail so he can acquire the Duke family farm for his own nefarious purposes. In a bid to get the Dukes back behind bars he sics his loyal but incompetent dog Sheriff Rosco on the two cousins in the hope that they’ll violate the terms of their parole but the real star of the show, at least for us (and not counting Daisy Duke’s shorts) is the Dukes’ bright orange Dodge Charger, nicknamed the General Lee after the American Civil War Confederate General Robert E Lee.

Politics aside (that’s a debate for another time), the car itself really captured the imagination of motoring fans the world over and quickly became an instantly recognisable icon, not only in the sphere of TV but within the automotive landscape as a whole. It might have been a different story if the ’69 Charger was merely ferrying the boys to and from mechanic Cooter’s workshop, or pottering about the Duke family farm, but the show was way more action packed than that with Bo and Luke constantly going full send in the General Lee, habitually in a bid to evade the law and often involving a jump or two, usually combined with the now legendary first 12 notes of the song “Dixie” through the car’s custom air horn. And who can forget the first time we saw Luke slide across the bonnet. Admit it, you’ve tried it at least once. TV gold.

The General Lee, based on a 1969 model Charger, was built as a race car within the Dukes of Hazzard universe and as such a roll bar was installed and the doors were welded shut, creating the need for Bo and Luke to enter via the windows. A move that just added to the innumerable cool points the car was quickly amassing. Johnny Cash even wrote a song about the Charger for the show’s soundtrack. See? Cool points. But this wasn’t just one car. Far from it. Some sources claim that the crew totalled over 300 Dodge Chargers over the course of the show’s six year production run, which isn’t surprising really considering the absolute beasting the cars would be subjected to.

Anyone who has legitimately jumped a car, intentionally or otherwise, will know that even the slightest amount of air can be catastrophic to a vehicle upon landing and where The Dukes of Hazzard was concerned the jumps were never small. Sand bags or concrete ballast was placed in the boot of the cars to prevent them from nose diving but generally speaking, any Charger that was used for a jump was immediately wrecked. With the benefit of technology we can now freeze-frame and slow-mo these stunts, allowing us to pinpoint the exact moment the chassis bends beyond repair which is why the production employed the services of a dedicated bodyshop throughout the course of filming.

A mixture of V8s with varying degrees of displacement were used with the more powerful 440 variants being preferred for the bigger jumps in order to achieve the required speeds, with lighter, smaller displacement engines being utilised for other stunt such as side-wheelies. Twenty or so of the original Chargers used for the show are believed to be left, in various states of repair, with full on replica models fetching big bucks. This particular example is for sale via the Car & Classic classifieds at £140,000 at the time of writing but we’ve seen other tribute cars commanding much more.

H&H Bodyshop in Norcorss, Georgia were the ones responsible for building and repairing the various General Lee Chargers used in the show. Owner Henry Holman and his small team were chosen mainly due to their proximity to the shooting location and although he was initially sceptical about being able to deliver, he remains proud to have been a part of it all and that people still remember it. “We probably drank too much beer and stayed awake too much but we did it” Henry recalls. Sounds like any time we fettle with our classics to be fair.

Remember it we do, though and the General Lee has become one of the most iconic TV cars of all time. Personally speaking, our affection for late ’60s muscle cars can be directly attributed to The Dukes of Hazzard and that bright orange Dodge Charger and it remains a dream garage contender for us. Perhaps not in the same colour scheme but a burly ’69 Charger would definitely have pride of place on the driveway, if we could afford one that is. For now we’ll just have to make do with jumping in through the window the next time we head to Sainsbury’s for a pint of milk, back injuries not withstanding of course.