June 29 | 2013
Saturday, June 29, 2013
John Schneider reunited with our General Lee after 35 years!
See info on car below
In 1978 the filming began for what would become the hit TV series, Dukes of Hazzard.
Originally 3 General Lee's were built for use in the filming of the first season episodes, which were filmed in GA.
Soon after filming began, it became quite apperant that more Dodge Chargers were going to need to be bought and transformed into the General Lee because of the extream abuse these cars took. An additional 5 Chargers were purchased for this tranformation.
This General Lee, which is on display at the Volo Auto Museum, was the last of the first season Chargers to be converted to a General Lee, making it LEE # 8.
It was assembled using parts from the already destroyed General Lee's, including a roll bar which came from LEE # 1. It has the rare and early style small front push bar, 15" grey wheels plus all the graphics were hand-painted by Larry West. *The graphics on all the General Lee's after this were decals to save money.
(below, roll bar from LEE #1)
(below, Larry West hand-painted graphics)
Soon after this General Lee was built, Warner Brothers decided to move the filming for season 2 to California.
Since this General Lee had not yet seen the screen and avoided being wrecked, John Shisler, one of the cars original builders and the man in charge of all the set used cars asked Warner Bros. if he could buy the car from them instead of sending it to CA. Warner Bros agreed and sold him the car.
This car avoided its fate of being one of the 249 General Lee's destroyed during the 7 years of the Dukes of Hazzard TV Series.
This car is in its all original condition as the day it was built 35 years ago. It is the nicest, unrestored example of a General Lee in existence
and possibly the only one to feature original Larry West hand painted graphics.
Since this was an original tan interior car, it features a nice REAL tan interior unlike many others that were painted tan.
Below are some photos of this car on the set, before it was transformed into a General Lee (the gold car in the background) along with copies of some of the many pieces of documentation supporting this cars authenticity.
The blue car in the front is LEE #1, after it was too far damaged to use as the General Lee, it was painted blue and portrayed a wrecked car
