THE GENERAL!

MAKE/MODEL: Dodge Charger [Road & Track (R/T)]. YEAR: 1969. ENGINE: It depends on which episode you're watching. Sometimes the engine of the General Lee was a 426 Hemi, with an Eldebrock torquer intake. Hemi is short for "Hemispherical", an engine design that provides more horsepower than any other V8, including the 440 Magnum. At other times, the General had a 440 Magnum or a 440 Six-Pack. If you see the cars in the jumps and crashes, chances are it has one of the stock engines, like a 318 or a 225. The tricked-out General Lees also had headers with 3" exhausts. It had a street-stock stall converter. FACTORY: Detroit, Michigan. TIRES: Racing, black sidewalls. CARBURETOR: A four-barrel Holly 780 Double-Pumper. Maybe a 750... TRANSMISSION: A Chrysler "Torqueflite" A-727 or B-727, the most durable automatic tranny ever built. In some episodes, however, a manual transmission was shown. LICENSE PLATE: Georgia CNH 320. MODIFICATIONS: To customize the car for the show, it was stripped down to the bare metal on the outside, the rough spots were sanded thoroughly, and then several coats of specially-mixed paint were applied. All of this work was done right at the studio, where the producers had set up a repair shop just for that purpose. The stock horn was replaced with a special horn that played the first twelve notes of "Dixie". New manifolds were put in the motor and a special exhaust system was installed; all spark plugs were replaced. A grill guard is also added, though it probably didn't protect much, knowing the way the General was driven. The roof of the General Lee was supported by three-point roll bars that helped retain the strength of the metal in the event the car was flipped over during a scene. The doors were welded shut for structural rigidity and storyline continuity. Of course, some General Lees (there were over 300) had un-welded doors. Courtesy of http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Bungal

I recieved an e-mail from one of my fellow Diecasters who remembers how the General came to be.. There was supposed to be a hazzard race. The duke boys in opening sequence get pulled over by Sheriff Coltrain. The confiscate Jesse's truck. Next sequence shows some bank robbers in a black Dodge Charger escaping from a jewelry robbery. The thiefs get chased and end up hiding the jewles in the dash of the Black Charger. They wrekc the car and the car gets hauled to a salvage yard at the outskirts of hazzard. Scene three has the duke boys looking for a new race car to buy and build up. They purchase black charrger. They with Cooter fix the damage and install the engine that they had shown between scenes 2 and 3. They decide to paint car with what paint Cooter had in the garage. All he had was Orange. They finished it up with the number and the Flag on the roof. the rest of the story goes... the bank robbers get out of jail and try to find out where the black car went to.. Duke boys get ( and here is where it is fuzzy) carinto the race and are racing. They win race. get jesse truck backj.. during or before .. i dont recall they bank robers have a run in with the duke boys and they discover the diamonds... Oh heck I don't remember much about the crooks, but that is how the general came to be. -Bogus1