A quick question for the real hardcore Dukes fanatics

[Ghoste]

A guy that comes to our weekly cruise night absolutely swears that in the last season there is an episode where they are using an AMC Matador for the General Lee.  True or not?

[tan top]

    but never seen the last ones

[69*F5*SE]

I've heard this to be true.  

[tan top]

I've heard this to be true.  

     

[Ghoste]

I'd like to know for sure because he's come at me a couple of times with this so if it's true fine but if it's untrue I want to be accurate when I tell him.

[tan top]

one of the GL dudes will know i'm sure ..ask him what episode it was in & season 
  i'm sure i saw a GL in one show that had 68 tail lights  , but was 28 ish years ago ..could of been mistaken

[Ghoste]

I have asked him, he doesn't know the episode but he's sure it was the last season. 

[MoparManJim]

A guy that comes to our weekly cruise night absolutely swears that in the last season there is an episode where they are using an AMC Matador for the General Lee.  True or not?

I heard the same thing from afew folks around my area. I know they used models in 6 to 7th season. But I'm still watching at times the later episodes to see if I can find this so call General Lee but haven't found it yet though. If i do, I'll let ya know.  

[Mike DC]

 
Not true.  The crew didn't use any GL stand-ins other than the 68/69 Chargers. 



Here's the probable story behind the Matador rumors: 

In the closing credits of every show after mid-season#2, there is a little line near the end saying, "some vehicles provided by AMC."  But that is referencing the product-placement deal they cut for Daisy's CJ-7 Jeeps, not any GL stand-ins. 



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So many of these odd movie-car rumors get started because most people just don't understand the numbers involved in Hollywood productions. 


Those were the days of drivable no-rust complete 69 Chargers being sold for $500, $1000, etc.  Maybe $2000 for a nice low-mileage 440 R/T.  Compare that to the show's total production cost, maybe $500,000+ per episode in 1980s dollars.

And within few months of starting the show, the crew had so many spare drivetrains & parts left over . . . in most cases a junkyard-refugee Charger rolling body would have been enough raw material to get another jump car put together when it was called for.   




There are stunt drivers to pay, ambulances to have on site, directors & producers & crew to pay, property to rent, the car to repaint & redress & rollcage & fuel cell, big heavy steel-framed takeoff ramps to haul up to the site & anchor down, shots to plan, filming equipment to rent & rig & crash-proof, a forklift & rollback to be ready to haul off the wreck afterwards  . . .

My point is this:  The price of a raggedy 12-year-old 318 Dodge Charger was a very small chunk of the total investment in any given jump shot. 


 

[69charger2002]

well in the closing credits chase scene the general is being chased by the AMC if i'm not mistaken.. but miked is for sure correct. they NEVER used an AMC as a general lee.

[Rallye]

They did use AMC's for some police car jumps, maybe that's what people are thinking of... 

[bull]

I know for sure some of the DOH cop cars were AMC.

And when I was a kid I had a model of a Matador that I painted like the GL. Does that count?

[MoparManJim]

I'm with Mike on this part. 

But what I had heard from the folks and this includes my one cousin as while. They all mention from time to time that this so called General Lee car was used for the long driving shots way down on the roads where there was bushes and such next to the road as it drove past them way out in the view. 

They always mention season 6 era when they ran short on chargers they used this car.

I have heard of this rumor for a very long time now but still today yet I haven't found it yet LOL. 

I keep hearing about it though.   

[General_01]

This is my theory:

I am watching "Happy Birthday General Lee" right now. The first episode of Season 7. Boss Hogg has a "race car" that looks like a Matador. It is painted white and orange with a number 13 on it. 20 minutes in it has already done a jump through a billboard ala' General Lee. The Gl was seen in the first two minutes of the show and is now a black Charger waiting to get get 'Generalized".

I am wondering with the lack of the dressed GL in this episode and the Matador which has coloring like the GL, if this guy isn't thinking that the Matador was the GL.

[bull]

Why would they bother using a Matador when they had umpteen Chargers on the set at all times?

[Mike DC]

                     
The AMC police cars were a brief thing.  Just in the first dozen or so episodes they shot in Cali.  Any time they're appearing after that, it's recycled footage.


The subcontractor for the vehicles got a deal on a batch of them, but the 2nd-unit stunt crew hated them.  (Small, easy to hurt, slow-ratio manual steering made them get accidentally wrecked a lot, etc.)

The producers told them to to back to the larger cop cars after that.  The Hazzard county P.D. was late-70s Furies & Monacos for the rest of the show.  (Lots of them were former C.H.P. cars - Panch & John, eat your heart out!) 

 

[MoparManJim]

Why would they bother using a Matador when they had umpteen Chargers on the set at all times?

Then why did they use models for?  

I think was in 6 season they had a shortage on chargers thats why they went to models for. 

But General_01 has a point though with that episode, I can see how folks would see that and think it's the General if they aren't paying attention.

[Dan T]

They never used anything other than a Charger for a GL. However, in the later seasons, they did use "dinky" or toy models for some of the outrageous jump scenes..
I should know, I have them all on DVD, and seen them tons of times..

[bull]

Why would they bother using a Matador when they had umpteen Chargers on the set at all times?

Then why did they use models for?  

I think was in 6 season they had a shortage on chargers thats why they went to models for. 

I think the shortage of Chargers is another myth. Even if it is true no one ever said they ran out completely. I think the real reason they used models is that the ratings sucked and so they got cheap. And using ANY real car would have cost more money than using a fake one. Actually, getting any full-scale car other than a '68-'69 Charger dressed and ready to appear on film would have cost them time and money, and by the end of the last season they didn't have extra of either.

[General_01]

Why would they bother using a Matador when they had umpteen Chargers on the set at all times?

Then why did they use models for?  

I think was in 6 season they had a shortage on chargers thats why they went to models for. 

I think the shortage of Chargers is another myth. Even if it is true no one ever said they ran out completely. I think the real reason they used models is that the ratings sucked and so they got cheap. And using ANY real car would have cost more money than using a fake one. Actually, getting any full-scale car other than a '68-'69 Charger dressed and ready to appear on film would have cost them time and money, and by the end of the last season they didn't have extra of either.

Even with the ratings down, the car was still cheap. I think the reason they went to models was to save on the whole stunt package part of the production. Less need for stuntmen, ambulances, and less stunt scenes in General. Reusing old jump shots also helped with this.

[Mike DC]

       

You have to view the word "shortage" in light of Hollywood standards.  These guys consider something "difficult" if you can't write a check and get 20 of them brand new at the drop of a hat. 

The Dukes crew dropped Daisy's Roadrunner partly because they had such a "shortage" of 1971-72 Roadrunner parts when they were looking (in Los Angeles, in 1979).  They were struggling to maintain a grand total of 3 of them. 

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The miniature stuff was cheap (but nowhere near as cheap as you probably think) + ability to do grander stunts. 


"Knight Rider" was doing all kinds of more elaborate-looking stuff with miniature work starting in 1982.  By 1984-85 Warner Bros was getting tired of trying to compete with that using real cars.  So they hired the same outfit that was doing the KR miniature work to do some DOH work too. 





As for model cars being cheap, it was probably only "cheap" compared to staging some of that stuff for real.  (And they still did full-size GL jumps several times during the miniature era when it was a moderate sized jump.)

The miniature work was done in scales like 1:8th.  For photography reasons, larger scales & outdoor shooting are MUCH more convincing.  Which means your "little" GL is more than two feet long.  Imagine trying to build a detailed backdrop scenery set that's a good 30 or 40 feet long just for one jump.  Now imagine paying someone else by the hour to build all that stuff.