Feature
The Resurrection of General Lee
The first '69 Dodge Charger to portray The Dukes of Hazzard's "General Lee" returns to its flight line
By now, The Dukes of Hazzard and the orange '69 Dodge Charger called the General Lee are as much a part of American culture as hamburgers and pickup trucks. And everyone knows the theme song.
But Indianapolis disc jockey Travis Bell has taken enthusiasm for The Dukes well beyond mere fandom. This guy has crossed into the realm of obsession. Already a co-founder of the North American General Lee Fan Club and the owner of a General Lee replica, Travis solidified his status as king of the Dukes fans in 2003 when he took an orange '69 Dodge Charger down to Covington, Georgia (where the first episodes of the TV series were shot), put one of the original stuntmen from the show in the driver seat and sent it flying in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the 1970s TV show.
Last year, however, Travis truly secured his place in Dukes history with his complete restoration of the very first Charger to ever portray Bo and Luke's beloved General Lee. Over 17 months, Travis transformed "Lee 1," as it was literally labeled by Warner Bros. back then, from a lump of mangled Mopar metal into what could be the most valuable 1969 Dodge Charger in the world.
This story will chronicle the 28-year journey of this very special 1969 Dodge Charger, which has gone from used car to pop culture phenomenon to derelict wreck to meticulously restored million-dollar piece of American history. With our apologies to the E! Channel, this is the True Hollywood Story of Lee 1.
Charger aviation
In 1978, Lee 1 was just a well-used Copper Metallic Charger with a vinyl top, a 383 and a TorqueFlite. It had spent its life in the possession of various ordinary owners, at least one of whom had been a student at Los Angeles Southwest College. It was, in sum, just another 9-year-old used car afloat in the ocean of Southern California traffic.
But at Warner Bros., writer-director Gy Waldron was reworking the characters and basic situations of his obscure 1975 film Moonrunners into a TV series (Moonrunners itself is based on the life of real moonshine runner Jerry Rushing). He turned "Grady Hagg" and "Bobby Lee Hagg" into "Bo" and "Luke Duke," added their cousin "Daisy Duke" and except for the obvious name change from Hagg to Duke, kept "Uncle Jesse." He also kept Waylon Jennings around as "The Balladeer" to narrate. And he knew that the old stock car and boring sedans used in that movie wouldn't cut it on television.
The stock car in Moonrunners had been named "Traveler" after the horse General Robert E. Lee rode during the Civil War. For the TV series, Waldron figured he would name it after the general himself. He also knew he wanted the car to be orange, but he left it up to the transportation department at Warner Bros. to come up with the car itself. It's no longer clear exactly who in that department thought a '69 Dodge Charger was the perfect car, but Waldron agreed. Warner Bros. started buying every '69 Dodge Charger in Southern California.
Star duds
Who designed the "01" lettering on the Charger's doors? Who decided the car should ride on American Racing Vector wheels? Who painted that first Confederate battle flag on the roof? All answers are lost in conflicting stories from the people who were there and assumptions of people who weren't. But that collective effort produced an instant icon.
After all, how many other cars have had Johnny Cash sing a song about them?
Once purchased by Warner Bros., Lee 1's transformation from everyday cruiser to TV star was not a careful one. The Charger wasn't treated with care or restored by the transportation department. It was just another car being prepped for just another TV show. So they ripped off the Charger's vinyl top, quickly sprayed it with an inconsistent coat of cheap Acme single-stage orange paint and added the soon-to-be-familiar graphics. A roll cage was added to the interior, a push bar was bolted to the nose, a CB antenna was stuck on the rear deck and those Vector wheels were bolted on. The General Lee was complete.
A star is born, and dies
In November of that same year, the Dukes of Hazzard pilot episode was filmed in and around Covington with the producers contracting local garages, mechanics and painters to maintain the cars used for that initial production and the first few episodes of the ensuing series.
On Saturday, November 11, 1978, the production set itself up on the campus of nearby Oxford College, built a dirt ramp along one of the roads, and had a stuntman jump the very first General Lee over a 1974 Monaco cop car — 16 feet up and 82 feet out. It landed on asphalt, nose first, folding each front fender and putting a crease across the floor pan and sills just behind the firewall. The General Lee may have been indestructible, but the cars that portrayed it were not.
A few weeks later, the same car was repainted blue-green with the number 71 on each door and featured in "Repo Men," the fourth episode of the series. To give the car the appearance of a wrecked Richard Petty stock car, gold racing wheels were bolted on and the Charger's sides were pounded with cinder blocks. And that was that for the television career of the original General Lee.
Sort of.
Although 320 additional General Lees were used and often destroyed during filming of the TV series, Lee 1 is the only General Lee to appear in every episode of the seven-year run of the popular TV show. It's the car that launches itself up a dirt mound and over that '74 Dodge Monaco squad car at the end of the opening credits.
Rotting away in Georgia clay
A mere 22 years later, Travis Bell and Gary Schneider, who had founded and were co-presidents of the North American General Lee Fan Club, went looking for Dukes artifacts in Georgia while on tour with "The Dukes of Hazzard Reunion Tour 2000." Through conversations with the series' old transportation coordinator, Bell and Schneider eventually wound up at Cliff Shaw Transmissions in Dawsonville.
"They had 51 totaled vehicles and the show hadn't even aired yet," remembers Bell. "Don Schisler, the transportation coordinator, gave them all to Cliff Shaw in exchange for two transmission jobs. Shaw crushed all of them...except those that had concrete in their trunk."
Back in 1978, state-of-the-art Dodge Charger aviation involved filling the trunks with concrete in order to balance the weight of the engine and keep the cars from immediately nosing over during their brief, almost always terminal but also glorious, flights. "And," Bell says, "[Shaw] said that he still had the vehicles with concrete in their trunks on his property [that contains hundreds of junked cars]. He said to just go down to the Pinto and turn left."
Back home again in Indiana
When Bell followed those directions through Shaw's backwoods, he found the first General Lee — mangled, derelict and sinking into the Georgia clay. A year later Bell went back, paid a reasonable three-figure sum, put the first General Lee on a trailer and took it back to his home in Indianapolis.
"I had the car for two years," Bell explains. "In its totaled state I took it to Chryslers at Carlisle and a few other shows. But people kept taking 'souvenirs' off it; paint chips and such. It was becoming a pain to babysit. So I sold it on eBay for $20,400 to four gentlemen in Ohio. And pretty soon they realized that once you have it, what do you do with it? So they put it back up on eBay and sold it to Marvin Murphy in Florida for $30,000.
"I drove with Marvin to Ohio, and we brought it back to my house. I asked Marvin what he planned to do with it. He said 'Now, we rebuild it!' I told him I thought it would be easier to pull the VIN off and put it on another car. 'You will never be able to fix this car,' I told him. 'I have no desire to rebuild this car.' And then he said to me, 'Travis, if someone spray-painted the Mona Lisa, someone would have to restore it. You're that man.' How could I argue with that?"
Saving the unsalvageable
So Bell began disassembling the car and sending the various pieces around Indiana for resurrection. The original engine and transmission were rebuilt at Jim's Auto in Greenwood, Indiana, and the shell was dropped off at Duane Walters at Walters Body Shop.
"If you put the car under a black light you could see the General Lee underneath," explains Bell. "So [pinstriper] Bob Keeney and I sanded all the green off the top to see underneath it. Took measurements and drawings and got all that down. Then we sent the shell for sandblasting and put it on the rotisserie. The transmission tunnel was folded over, and the whole car was shortened an inch to an inch and a half. It was bent, but solid. No rust. The Georgia clay had saved it."
On a frame rack the car near miraculously pulled out to almost perfect Dodge factory specifications. "So there's no replaced frame and even that hump in the tunnel pulled out. But the whole back of the car needed to be replaced, so I bought another '69 Charger and took the whole rear clip and put it on Lee 1. The only repro sheet metal is the truck floorpan. The doors and the fenders mounted straight up."
Perfectly imperfect
To accurately restore the car to the condition it was in that day it jumped, they first had to paint it Copper Metallic...and then put that cheap orange paint over that. Then Keeney got to work recreating the ludicrously inconsistent graphics. Every star on the roof's flag points a slightly different direction — but it's the same direction that star pointed in 1978. The "General Lee" lettering was meticulously repainted and the big "01" on either door was drawn on in the same haphazard (no pun intended) manner. Even the crossed flags behind the rear window (which were excluded from future Generals to simplify the building process during the series' run) were put back on with their flaws intact.
"It's almost insane," explains Bell. "You can't get 14-by-7-inch Vector wheels, but we found them. Right down to the Carroll Shelby center caps. We found the right Radio Shack radio antenna. It has the original dash, the original steering wheel, there's the original 'Lee 1' label where Warner Bros. put it and the college parking sticker is still on the windshield."
Bell's verisimilitude extended to the recreated front push bar (smaller than the bars that would be used on subsequent Lees) and to using the same gears in the rear end. "The goal here wasn't to build a perfect General Lee," asserts Bell. "It was to preserve a chunk of history. This car is as close to being exactly what it was like the day it hit that ramp and flew as it can be."
To revive what had been so unceremoniously created in 1978 at Warner Bros. cost Marvin Murphy about $75,000.
Georgia-bound
To debut the restored first General Lee, Bell loaded it onto a trailer and drove it down to Oxford College to the exact spot where it first jumped. It was driven off that trailer on November 11, 2006 — 28 years later to the day after it flew. And Bell had his friend John Schneider, the original Bo Duke himself, drive the car off that trailer.
Bell and Murphy will likely show the car over the next few years, holding onto it at least through the 30th anniversary of the Dukes' debut. Then Murphy may (or may not) send it across the auction block at the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction. Go ahead; speculate away on how much the very first General Lee Charger would go for at auction; then add a few zeroes to the end of that figure.
Fate of the General
But this isn't a car that should wind up in some rich guy's garage gathering dust alongside other discarded toys. After all, this is a car that inspired millions of kids' dreams, not just those with seven figures to blow on an old Dodge.
Nope, this car deserves its spot next to Archie Bunker's chair, Dorothy's ruby slippers, the original shooting model of Captain Kirk's U.S.S. Enterprise and the signpost that once sat in the middle of the 4077th's camp. It's a piece of American history and deserves to be displayed as such at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. Thanks, Travis.
But Indianapolis disc jockey Travis Bell has taken enthusiasm for The Dukes well beyond mere fandom. This guy has crossed into the realm of obsession. Already a co-founder of the North American General Lee Fan Club and the owner of a General Lee replica, Travis solidified his status as king of the Dukes fans in 2003 when he took an orange '69 Dodge Charger down to Covington, Georgia (where the first episodes of the TV series were shot), put one of the original stuntmen from the show in the driver seat and sent it flying in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the 1970s TV show.
Last year, however, Travis truly secured his place in Dukes history with his complete restoration of the very first Charger to ever portray Bo and Luke's beloved General Lee. Over 17 months, Travis transformed "Lee 1," as it was literally labeled by Warner Bros. back then, from a lump of mangled Mopar metal into what could be the most valuable 1969 Dodge Charger in the world.
This story will chronicle the 28-year journey of this very special 1969 Dodge Charger, which has gone from used car to pop culture phenomenon to derelict wreck to meticulously restored million-dollar piece of American history. With our apologies to the E! Channel, this is the True Hollywood Story of Lee 1.
Charger aviation
In 1978, Lee 1 was just a well-used Copper Metallic Charger with a vinyl top, a 383 and a TorqueFlite. It had spent its life in the possession of various ordinary owners, at least one of whom had been a student at Los Angeles Southwest College. It was, in sum, just another 9-year-old used car afloat in the ocean of Southern California traffic.
But at Warner Bros., writer-director Gy Waldron was reworking the characters and basic situations of his obscure 1975 film Moonrunners into a TV series (Moonrunners itself is based on the life of real moonshine runner Jerry Rushing). He turned "Grady Hagg" and "Bobby Lee Hagg" into "Bo" and "Luke Duke," added their cousin "Daisy Duke" and except for the obvious name change from Hagg to Duke, kept "Uncle Jesse." He also kept Waylon Jennings around as "The Balladeer" to narrate. And he knew that the old stock car and boring sedans used in that movie wouldn't cut it on television.
The stock car in Moonrunners had been named "Traveler" after the horse General Robert E. Lee rode during the Civil War. For the TV series, Waldron figured he would name it after the general himself. He also knew he wanted the car to be orange, but he left it up to the transportation department at Warner Bros. to come up with the car itself. It's no longer clear exactly who in that department thought a '69 Dodge Charger was the perfect car, but Waldron agreed. Warner Bros. started buying every '69 Dodge Charger in Southern California.
Star duds
Who designed the "01" lettering on the Charger's doors? Who decided the car should ride on American Racing Vector wheels? Who painted that first Confederate battle flag on the roof? All answers are lost in conflicting stories from the people who were there and assumptions of people who weren't. But that collective effort produced an instant icon.
After all, how many other cars have had Johnny Cash sing a song about them?
Once purchased by Warner Bros., Lee 1's transformation from everyday cruiser to TV star was not a careful one. The Charger wasn't treated with care or restored by the transportation department. It was just another car being prepped for just another TV show. So they ripped off the Charger's vinyl top, quickly sprayed it with an inconsistent coat of cheap Acme single-stage orange paint and added the soon-to-be-familiar graphics. A roll cage was added to the interior, a push bar was bolted to the nose, a CB antenna was stuck on the rear deck and those Vector wheels were bolted on. The General Lee was complete.
A star is born, and dies
In November of that same year, the Dukes of Hazzard pilot episode was filmed in and around Covington with the producers contracting local garages, mechanics and painters to maintain the cars used for that initial production and the first few episodes of the ensuing series.
On Saturday, November 11, 1978, the production set itself up on the campus of nearby Oxford College, built a dirt ramp along one of the roads, and had a stuntman jump the very first General Lee over a 1974 Monaco cop car — 16 feet up and 82 feet out. It landed on asphalt, nose first, folding each front fender and putting a crease across the floor pan and sills just behind the firewall. The General Lee may have been indestructible, but the cars that portrayed it were not.
A few weeks later, the same car was repainted blue-green with the number 71 on each door and featured in "Repo Men," the fourth episode of the series. To give the car the appearance of a wrecked Richard Petty stock car, gold racing wheels were bolted on and the Charger's sides were pounded with cinder blocks. And that was that for the television career of the original General Lee.
Sort of.
Although 320 additional General Lees were used and often destroyed during filming of the TV series, Lee 1 is the only General Lee to appear in every episode of the seven-year run of the popular TV show. It's the car that launches itself up a dirt mound and over that '74 Dodge Monaco squad car at the end of the opening credits.
Rotting away in Georgia clay
A mere 22 years later, Travis Bell and Gary Schneider, who had founded and were co-presidents of the North American General Lee Fan Club, went looking for Dukes artifacts in Georgia while on tour with "The Dukes of Hazzard Reunion Tour 2000." Through conversations with the series' old transportation coordinator, Bell and Schneider eventually wound up at Cliff Shaw Transmissions in Dawsonville.
"They had 51 totaled vehicles and the show hadn't even aired yet," remembers Bell. "Don Schisler, the transportation coordinator, gave them all to Cliff Shaw in exchange for two transmission jobs. Shaw crushed all of them...except those that had concrete in their trunk."
Back in 1978, state-of-the-art Dodge Charger aviation involved filling the trunks with concrete in order to balance the weight of the engine and keep the cars from immediately nosing over during their brief, almost always terminal but also glorious, flights. "And," Bell says, "[Shaw] said that he still had the vehicles with concrete in their trunks on his property [that contains hundreds of junked cars]. He said to just go down to the Pinto and turn left."
Back home again in Indiana
When Bell followed those directions through Shaw's backwoods, he found the first General Lee — mangled, derelict and sinking into the Georgia clay. A year later Bell went back, paid a reasonable three-figure sum, put the first General Lee on a trailer and took it back to his home in Indianapolis.
"I had the car for two years," Bell explains. "In its totaled state I took it to Chryslers at Carlisle and a few other shows. But people kept taking 'souvenirs' off it; paint chips and such. It was becoming a pain to babysit. So I sold it on eBay for $20,400 to four gentlemen in Ohio. And pretty soon they realized that once you have it, what do you do with it? So they put it back up on eBay and sold it to Marvin Murphy in Florida for $30,000.
"I drove with Marvin to Ohio, and we brought it back to my house. I asked Marvin what he planned to do with it. He said 'Now, we rebuild it!' I told him I thought it would be easier to pull the VIN off and put it on another car. 'You will never be able to fix this car,' I told him. 'I have no desire to rebuild this car.' And then he said to me, 'Travis, if someone spray-painted the Mona Lisa, someone would have to restore it. You're that man.' How could I argue with that?"
Saving the unsalvageable
So Bell began disassembling the car and sending the various pieces around Indiana for resurrection. The original engine and transmission were rebuilt at Jim's Auto in Greenwood, Indiana, and the shell was dropped off at Duane Walters at Walters Body Shop.
"If you put the car under a black light you could see the General Lee underneath," explains Bell. "So [pinstriper] Bob Keeney and I sanded all the green off the top to see underneath it. Took measurements and drawings and got all that down. Then we sent the shell for sandblasting and put it on the rotisserie. The transmission tunnel was folded over, and the whole car was shortened an inch to an inch and a half. It was bent, but solid. No rust. The Georgia clay had saved it."
On a frame rack the car near miraculously pulled out to almost perfect Dodge factory specifications. "So there's no replaced frame and even that hump in the tunnel pulled out. But the whole back of the car needed to be replaced, so I bought another '69 Charger and took the whole rear clip and put it on Lee 1. The only repro sheet metal is the truck floorpan. The doors and the fenders mounted straight up."
Perfectly imperfect
To accurately restore the car to the condition it was in that day it jumped, they first had to paint it Copper Metallic...and then put that cheap orange paint over that. Then Keeney got to work recreating the ludicrously inconsistent graphics. Every star on the roof's flag points a slightly different direction — but it's the same direction that star pointed in 1978. The "General Lee" lettering was meticulously repainted and the big "01" on either door was drawn on in the same haphazard (no pun intended) manner. Even the crossed flags behind the rear window (which were excluded from future Generals to simplify the building process during the series' run) were put back on with their flaws intact.
"It's almost insane," explains Bell. "You can't get 14-by-7-inch Vector wheels, but we found them. Right down to the Carroll Shelby center caps. We found the right Radio Shack radio antenna. It has the original dash, the original steering wheel, there's the original 'Lee 1' label where Warner Bros. put it and the college parking sticker is still on the windshield."
Bell's verisimilitude extended to the recreated front push bar (smaller than the bars that would be used on subsequent Lees) and to using the same gears in the rear end. "The goal here wasn't to build a perfect General Lee," asserts Bell. "It was to preserve a chunk of history. This car is as close to being exactly what it was like the day it hit that ramp and flew as it can be."
To revive what had been so unceremoniously created in 1978 at Warner Bros. cost Marvin Murphy about $75,000.
Georgia-bound
To debut the restored first General Lee, Bell loaded it onto a trailer and drove it down to Oxford College to the exact spot where it first jumped. It was driven off that trailer on November 11, 2006 — 28 years later to the day after it flew. And Bell had his friend John Schneider, the original Bo Duke himself, drive the car off that trailer.
Bell and Murphy will likely show the car over the next few years, holding onto it at least through the 30th anniversary of the Dukes' debut. Then Murphy may (or may not) send it across the auction block at the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction. Go ahead; speculate away on how much the very first General Lee Charger would go for at auction; then add a few zeroes to the end of that figure.
Fate of the General
But this isn't a car that should wind up in some rich guy's garage gathering dust alongside other discarded toys. After all, this is a car that inspired millions of kids' dreams, not just those with seven figures to blow on an old Dodge.
Nope, this car deserves its spot next to Archie Bunker's chair, Dorothy's ruby slippers, the original shooting model of Captain Kirk's U.S.S. Enterprise and the signpost that once sat in the middle of the 4077th's camp. It's a piece of American history and deserves to be displayed as such at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. Thanks, Travis.
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