68-70 Charger wrecking frenzy continues

[hemi cammer]

A friend of mine works on a tv / movie set on the west coast and was working on the set of the tv series "Smallville". He told me that they were filming an episode where they were beating on a 68 Charger and then they had a second nice one for the non-action shots. Dam you dukes of hazzard!

[Silver R/T]

smallville blows its for pre teens, not worth crashing Chargre for preteens

[cudaken]

 Boom, Boom, another one bites the dust. I told all of you the Duke's where evil!

                       Cuda Ken

[MoparYoungGun]

Isn't John Schneider from The Dukes of Hazzard on that show?

[Just 6T9 CHGR]

Isn't John Schneider from The Dukes of Hazzard on that show?

I believe so.....

[8WHEELER]

Boom, Boom, another one bites the dust. I told all of you the Duke's where evil!

                                  Cuda Ken

  To tell you the truth the Dukes don't bother me that much, having said that I will
NEVER NEVER EVER see why jumping and wrecking a 68-69 charger with an 01 on the side
of it is so DAMN cool to some people. Yeah John says there the best cars in the world then
he wrecks more and think its great 

Dan

[69RealGL]

Hey

That was Stuntman's  charger  they used,  richard cummins  ,the one that was recently on ebay.John is on Smallville and i think Tom Wopat was a speical guest .


Later

K.c 

[cudaken]

 8 Wheeler, reason he think's it great? HE GET PAID TO DO IT!

See how great he think's it is if he had to bulid is own!

                                   Cuda Ken

[MGBRingo]

The wrecking of those Chargers has done a lot to increase the value of our cars.    I say let them continue within reason.

Many of us may not have been Charger fans if it wasn't for DOH.

[Wakko]

Hang on guys, let's get the whole story out there.  Stuntman on CGLFC.com owns the Charger that they jumped.  It was originally a General Lee with some history to it and he OFFERED WB use of the car if they agreed to "put it back".  They repainted it to look like a blue '68 and drove it like a banshee.   Yes, they jumped it...twice...but not a big high jump, but big long jumps (which means less damage).  Now that filming is done, WB is going to redo the car and put it BACK to GL status and repair the damage as best they can.  Tom Wopat guest stars using the name "Jimmy Jennings".  Vectors were left on the car.



http://www.cglfc.com/wforum/viewtopic.php?t=2795
http://www.cglfc.com/wforum/viewtopic.php?t=2964

[hemi cammer]

The wrecking of those Chargers has done a lot to increase the value of our cars.    I say let them continue within reason.

Many of us may not have been Charger fans if it wasn't for DOH.

This "less cars makes mine more valueable" way of thinking is contributing to the destruction of the hobby. My father was telling me about a guy he met on a job a couple years ago who had a 1970 Roadrunner and every 1970 sattelite, roadrunner or gtx he found he would purposely destory because he believed it made his car worth more. People like that should be lined up and shot in my opinion, ive made it one of my personal goals in life to find and rescue as many cool old cars as possible so that future car hobbyists can have their dreams come true. Its already hard to find a good restorable classic, since when did it become about money? They shouldnt be something you invest in like real estate or stocks and bonds... Its nice to know your car is worth something but wouldnt it be even better if you saw more of them around instead of the round boring zero-personality bellybutton cars of today or even worse, RICE!

[TruckDriver]

The wrecking of those Chargers has done a lot to increase the value of our cars.    I say let them continue within reason.

Many of us may not have been Charger fans if it wasn't for DOH.

This "less cars makes mine more valueable" way of thinking is contributing to the destruction of the hobby. My father was telling me about a guy he met on a job a couple years ago who had a 1970 Roadrunner and every 1970 sattelite, roadrunner or gtx he found he would purposely destory because he believed it made his car worth more. People like that should be lined up and shot in my opinion, ive made it one of my personal goals in life to find and rescue as many cool old cars as possible so that future car hobbyists can have their dreams come true. Its already hard to find a good restorable classic, since when did it become about money? They shouldnt be something you invest in like real estate or stocks and bonds... Its nice to know your car is worth something but wouldnt it be even better if you saw more of them around instead of the round boring zero-personality bellybutton cars of today or even worse, RICE!

            Someone posted a story like that about a year ago on the our old D-C.com board about Mustang guys going around doing that sort of thing too. I hate morons like that

[THE COLONEL]

Alot of people don't like the fact the the Dukes of Hazzard destroyed Chargers, and that being the reason, so they think,   is why there are so few out there to buy.   Heck some people are apalled that you might have a General Lee.   There are said to be between 309-350 Chargers used in the fiming of the entire series from 1979-1985.   309 Chargers is the documented number right now, but it probably was more toward 350. Now Figure in that there are 19 General Lee's from the show that are either driving or are in the process of restoration right now.   There were also only 68's and 69's ( no 1970 Chargers ) used in the filming of the Dukes of Hazzard.

Now, I don't know the exact numbers, but think about the total number of Chargers made by Chrysler in 1968 and 1969.   The Dukes of Hazzard does not even account for 1% of the total Chargers made in those two years.   In my opinion, the people that ruin Chargers are the ones that let them rot in a field, or even in their front yard, and won't let you buy them for a million dollars, then yell at you to get off their property.   I can guarentee you that there are more people that have destroyed Chargers this way, then what was ever used in the Dukes.   Just my $.02

[hemi cammer]

I agree with The Colonel about the evil people letting cars rot in fields. My grandfather and I run a sort of back yard wrecking yard and in my travels ive probably found a couple hundred cars that "will be restored one day"  by people who will never have the resources to do so. The Cars in Barns website is right full of that sort of thing as we all know and ive even contributed a few pictures and stories myself. These cars should be experienced by everyone whos interested in driving them, restoring them and everything else related to them, not by morons who just buy them to hoard for several years expecting to cash in. The picture below is of one i found recently in Alberta... a 69 Charger 383 auto car sitting in a fenced in yard...  and probably will till its too late.

[THE CHARGER PUNK]

speaking of destroying chargers a show called fastlane that appeared in 2002 featured these 2 cops that drove around really nice muscle cars and in one episode the cops aree driving a yellow 68 charger r/t and the bad guys blow it up with a rocket launcher anyone else see this?-MATT

[DarkAngel0816]

Actually down at Dukesfest I was told by someone that worked on the series they did use 1970's...but converted them over as well to look like a 1969. 

is due to being such a huge Dukes fan as a child.  I loved the General Lee...thought it was tough...and when I started looking for a classic car and saw that Chargers were hard to come by...compared to other cars out there...I knew I had to find a Charger.

If it was not for that show I probably would have bought a classic Mustang or something.  Instead I saved a mopar.

[derailed]

The wrecking of those Chargers has done a lot to increase the value of our cars.    I say let them continue within reason.

Great for the value of them, until you need a part like a grille for the damn thing. Some of the nicest grills i saw were flying through the air on the General Lee right before it landed.

[Wakko]

Maybe back in the 70/80s but the jumped cars of today use patchwork or fiberglass grills.  You think they're gonna destroy an 800 grille? 

[8WHEELER]

All I said was I will never see the interest in jumping a charger for any distance really
it makes no sense to me why that is so cool to so people.
As for the DOH making the chargers more popular yes I can see that but a vast majority of
those people will be making GL clones. Its the people that say Chargers would not be popular
today if it were not for that show    no I will never go with that point of view. I bought my
red 68 in 1978 before the show aired and I loved the body style then and I allways will.

Dan

[derailed]

  You think they're gonna destroy an 800 grille?  

Well i was refering to the early shows but when i think about it, yes i do. Anything goes in Hollywood 

[ChargerSG]

Still i cant understand why they have to destroy Chargers, why not just trick it and crash another car, with todays editing things they would have no problem with it, if they could do in the 70 ´s in Vansihingpoint(smashing a empty Camaro shelf) and returning all the 4 cars to Dodge, why the h... not now....

[hemi cammer]

Maybe back in the 70/80s but the jumped cars of today use patchwork or fiberglass grills.   You think they're gonna destroy an 800 grille?  

This is hollywood we are talking about here, theyve got tons of money and could care less if the grille cost a few thousand dollars...

[dpm68]

hemicammer, methinks that one's a '70. just the same, it's sad because it will probably be reclaimed by the earth.

[Troy]

Maybe back in the 70/80s but the jumped cars of today use patchwork or fiberglass grills.  You think they're gonna destroy an 800 grille? 

This is hollywood we are talking about here, theyve got tons of money and could care less if the grille cost a few thousand dollars...

Oh yes they do. If you talk to anyone who supplied cars/parts for the last movie or was on the set then you'll know that they tried to reuse anything that was difficult/expensive to replace. Most all of the jump cars were so bad that no one here would even begin to tackle the restoration and most of the important parts were removed. You have to remember that these guys don't have months to go looking for a "correct" part like some of us. If it's not available then they make it or hide the fact with movie magic. In the grand scheme of things, they could buy a halfway decent 69 Charger for under $10k and slap on some bondo and paint which still makes it a lot cheaper than purchasing a bunch of new Chargers to crash.

Any way, I fail to see how beating on one car (original post) contributes to a "frenzy" especially if you don't know the real story about it.

Troy

[jaak]

 

[Dale The Bold]

I did the math on this a while ago.  The Dukes of Hazzard is responsible for the destruction of 0.1% of the 68-70 Chargers out there.  Notice the decimal point.  That is ONE TENTH of one percent.

That being said, an estimated 1% of 68-70 Chargers has been turned into a General Lee or General Lee clone (one-tenth of which were destroyed, as mentioned above). 

So why aren't people angry about rust, car accidents, and "gonna fix it someday" guys?  They destroy a lot more Chargers than any TV series ever could.  Especially since the Smallville episode isn't wrecking any Chargers.

And as I always say, if the General Lee bothers you that much, sell your Charger and buy a car that wasn't good enough for the producers of the show to choose.