Some other interesting points
about the General's birth
-The choice of the '69 Dodge Charger as the Dukes' racing car was almost coincidental.
Executive producer Paul Picard
and show creator Gy Waldron did have a late '60s muscle car in mind. However, the
final choice was made when the
studio transportation captain showed them the '69 Charger.
-The "Dixie" horn was added when Picard and Waldron, who were driving along a
Georgia highway to film the show's
first episodes, heard the horn in a passing car. They chased the car down and
convinced the driver of the car to sell the
musical horn. They later found out they paid five times the actual price of the horn,
which was a stock item that could be bought at almost any auto-accessories store.
Boxes of lead weight were stored in the trunk during jumps to balance the weight of the engine in front thus preventing the car from turning end over end in the air. About 500-600 pounds of ballast were used for short jumps; 1000 pounds for large jumps.
-On all the General Lees used for the show, the locking mechanism is disconnected
from the foot-operated parking brake
for the "Bootleggers' Turn", the 180-degree turns the Dukes made in practically every
show to lose sheriff Rosco, and/or
deputies Enos and Cletus.
-During the show's prime, the General Lee itself received over 30,000 pieces of fan
mail monthly. Many letters asked for
autographed pictures of The General.
-Of the 85,000 or so 1969 Dodge Chargers sold by the Chrysler Corporation, over 300
were used in The Dukes of
Hazzard. As told by the shows' stunt coordinator and former stunt driver, Paul Baxley:
"Once a car has jumped, it's
finished. The shock of the impact completely destroys the structural integrity of the
car, even if there's no visible damage.
We don't even drive a car on the show after it's been jumped. If the shot didn't come
out right the first time, we do it
again with another car."