Another General Lee is gone...

[jaak]

    Mine's still sitting in the shop so I won't loose sleep over it.  BTW are those taillights home made out of some redplastic or something they look weird.

Jason

[69charger2002]

 
The subject has been beaten to death a million times. 

It's not great to see GLs smashed, but the hobby has lost a lot more cars to mundane reasons.  A handful of jumped GLs are just more visible & frustrating than the thousands of cars that rot away in redneck towns all over America.   

the problem is most of those mundane reasons for chargers being gone happened back in the 70's and 80's, when they were just cars. this whole jumping thing is a recent fad.. say 2003-2007.. not only is it more visible and frustrating, but with chargers in general being more cherished these days, not many people are killing them for "mundane reasons", EXCEPT for a few general lee freaks who still want that 4 second thrill.. i still don't understand if an event like that is setup just so one fruitcake can feel what it's like to jump a car, since it was his dream as a kid.. why not just jump any old car, it FEELS the same, WHY a 68-70 charger.. parts car or not?  hell i've always wanted to jump a car since that show was on in the 80's, miked i'm sure you too and many others.. but come on, we know better.. it's called growing up.. and also KNOWING that it's not cool as it once was
trav

[70charger_boy]

I recently saw an interview with the guy who did the scouting for cars for the dukes of hazard.  He decided and persuaded warner brothers to go for the charger, because it had the best front suspension that they needed to do all the stunts.  They were almost going to use a 69 camaro.  Can you imagine the General Lee as anything other than a 69 charger?  If they were to jump a 69 charger general lee 500 miles away from my house I would travel to see it.  I don't care what anybody says that would give me goosebumps.  These days anything can be rebuilt.  The same people that want to jump the charger are the same people that want to rebuild one.

[Mike DC]

If they were to jump a 69 charger general lee 500 miles away from my house I would travel to see it.  I don't care what anybody says that would give me goosebumps.

I think I've seen 7 General Lee jumps in person.  And probably about 13-15 violent pipe-ramp rollovers. 

Lemme tell you, the thrill never goes away. 
You get a real adrenalin rush just watching on the sidelines once that car is finally on the banzai-run to the ramp. 


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if an event like that is setup just so one fruitcake can feel what it's like to jump a car, since it was his dream as a kid.. why not just jump any old car, it FEELS the same, WHY a 68-70 charger.. parts car or not?  hell i've always wanted to jump a car since that show was on in the 80's, miked i'm sure you too and many others.. but come on, we know better.. it's called growing up.. and also KNOWING that it's not cool as it once was
trav

I agree.  I'd love to try a real GL jump once in my life (well, at least a small one).  But I'd sooner use some other car painted like the GL too. 

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The whole thing just doesn't bother me as much as it used to, though.  Cars in that shape are simply not realistic restoration candidates.  A few of them might get fixed but I doubt it would happen within a working lifetime.  (IMHO if you can't afford to spend the price of an 8-year-old used Toyota on the initial purchase of the Charger, then you're never really gonna be able to do the restoration anyway.)

The truth is that most of these junkers being jumped would have been parts-donors at best, and lately it's becoming increasingly clear that 3/4 of the car's outer skin & floors is gonna be repop'd soon.   

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I also think we'll eventually see a more jump-able GL project of some sort.  Maybe it's not gonna do 170-footers without a scratch, but mankind can build SOMETHING that doesn't write-off an entire unibody each time it hits the dirt.  The technology is there but it just hasn't been applied to an orange Charger yet. 

IMHO it's only a matter of time.  I would already have done it if I had the resources. 

   

[dpm68]

At any rate, I have mine. It may sit, but I have it.

[WM23N1]

Im just glad the general lee wasnt a third gen charger. THAT would be sad.

[Ghoste]

You never find us Dirty Mary Crazy Larry fans crashing Chargers into trains or blowing them up for kicks do you? 

[Chris G.]

You never find us Dirty Mary Crazy Larry fans crashing Chargers into trains or blowing them up for kicks do you? 

Can you imagine how much the stuntman would ask to perform a DM/CL stunt? It's a little more complicated than jumping 20 feet. 

[Mike DC]

 
Hitting a train wasn't a signature move of the DMCL Charger, either.  It was just an unfortunate outcome in the flick.   


The GL's jumps were its ultimate combat maneuver and weren't harmful to the fictional character. 

DOH fans love seeing the GL jump for the same reason that drag racers love seeing the Hurst Hemi Under Glass or the Lil Red Wagon drag its rear bumper for hundreds of yards. 


     

[remta1]

   give it a couple of weeks and it will be on hlpag "fully restored "   lol 

[JMF]

Personally I think it's an insult jumping these great cars to people who are saving up for a Charger, I know the ones they jump are rough but anything can be restored, look at Lee #1, in 100 years time people will look at those videos when all the existing ones are antiques in museums and just think everyone alive in our time were just idiots

[70charger_boy]

Personally I think it's an insult jumping these great cars to people who are saving up for a Charger, I know the ones they jump are rough but anything can be restored, look at Lee #1, in 100 years time people will look at those videos when all the existing ones are antiques in museums and just think everyone alive in our time were just idiots

Will you ever attend a jump?

I still get goosebumps when I see the longest jump ever made by the general in the opening credits.  It took alot of skill to get the jumps right

[JMF]

Well i'm in England so not likely, I understand the thrill of seeing one jump but I think it's time to put an end to it as these cars aren't getting harder to find, can't they jump the new Charger instead : )

[Mike DC]

LEE#1 wasn't restored in the sense of being "saved." 

It was able to be restored because several other less-wrecked Chargers donated themselves to the cause of saving that particular car for the sake of its VIN number. 


I don't wanna dredge up the whole LEE#1 debate & derail the thread. 
My point is that when most cars get so far gone, it becomes essentially impossible to "save" them without costing the hobby another decent Charger's worth of parts in the process anyway.  Not much net gain to the hobby other than allowing certain collectible VINs to survive. 

[JMF]

What you mean Lee #1 used parts from other Charger's? I thought they restored all the original panels?..............Just joking : )

[Mike DC]

 
Yeah, it's a misconception that restoring a big-time car out of nothing but an original door hinge is always "saving" another car.

There's nothing wrong with the average home-restorer doing some junkyard scrounging from the wrecks, but that's not always what happens.  Especially when it comes to professional restorations where they've got the resources to do it the most cost-effective way at the beginning.  A lot of pro restorers are pretty quick to tear down a decent $15,000 driver just to fix a $120,000 Hemi car.  Not really much of a net gain for the hobby IMHO.

 

[69bronzeT5]

Ok, lets keep this thread away from the Lee #1 topic, everytime somebody mentions that car, the thread goes bad and it gets locked.




But still, like JMF said, alot of people dream of owning a Charger...some of them actually get the cash to get one but cant find a decent second gen. project. Then you got these guys who wreck them like there still in production

[Mike DC]

some of them actually get the cash to get one but cant find a decent second gen. project. Then you got these guys who wreck them like there still in production rotz

There are multiple 2nd-gen Chargers for sale every single day of the year, every year.  Thousands have changed hands in the last couple of years.  Cars in every price range & condition level. 

Show me a guy who "can't find" a 2nd-gen, and I'll show you a guy who can find dozens of them but just can't find one priced far enough below the average to get it. 

[70charger_boy]

It has been my dream to get a 69 charger.  For years and years when I saw the dukes of hazard I would tear up hoping and praying that one day I could own a car like that.  I had to settle with a 70, because the 69's are through the roof in prices.  Either way, I bought one and quickly got a reality check in how freaking expensive everything is.  I payed 125 bucks for a corner molding for the rear window!!!!!  WTF!!!  almost 1,000 bucks for upper door pads and door panels.  125 bucks for an antenna.  150 bucks for a pair of arm rests.  A console can go for more than a grand.  With these prices, only the rich can afford these cars.  Why do you think there are so many projects for sale?  Most people are forced to sell, because they can't afford most of the parts.  That is pretty sad. 

[69bronzeT5]

some of them actually get the cash to get one but cant find a decent second gen. project. Then you got these guys who wreck them like there still in production rotz

There are multiple 2nd-gen Chargers for sale every single day of the year, every year.  Thousands have changed hands in the last couple of years.  Cars in every price range & condition level. 

Show me a guy who "can't find" a 2nd-gen, and I'll show you a guy who can find dozens of them but just can't find one priced far enough below the average to get it. 

[70charger_boy]

Look at this jump and tell me that it's cool
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=730634911

[Mike DC]

 
It's cool.

BTW:  That car in the clip was rusty as usual.  I looked it over it in person a couple years later.  I'll concede that it should have been fixed up rather than jumped, but it wasn't a NICE car by any stretch.  (Needed the whole rear half of the sheetmetal, gutted dashboard & inside, etc.)


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I totally agree that it sucks to see these cars get so expensive, but a handful of GL jumps with rusty ones just aren't statistically significant. 

In the 1990s-2000s, I guarantee you that we've lost ten times as many decent 2nd-gens to various hot-rodding fads (Pro-Street, etc) than we ever lost to flying GLs.  And the car-guy world PRAISES most of those buildups. 

[Ghoste]

No, I kind of vomit when I see any classic car destroyed for no good reason.

[69bronzeT5]

Look at this jump and tell me that it's cool
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=730634911

Ok, you got me on that one..Ive always liked that part of Hazzard in Hollywood...it was a good jump

[Mike DC]

No, I kind of vomit when I see any classic car destroyed for no good reason.

Fair enough.  But everyone has a different idea of "destroyed for no reason."   

I'm sure that plenty of now-famous NASCAR drivers probably destroyed a ton of classic Chargers and parts on small-time dirt tracks from 1979-1985.  That was nothing more than destroying cars for entertainment too, and yet there's never any venom aimed at those racers nowadays like there is for the DOH television show.  (And car for car, I'll bet the DOH wrecks ultimately did the hobby LIGHT-YEARS more good in this case.)   



It's all just an opinion about whether one form of destruction is more "appropriate" than another.