Hemmings Find of the Day – the General Lee

Or, at least, one of ‘em. TA pointed out this 1969 Dodge Charger, alleged to be an actual, Warner Brothers-used General Lee, currently for sale on Hemmings.com for $110,000. From the seller’s description:

This is documented as one of the original Dodge Chargers bought by Warner Bros. in 1978 for use during the Georgia filming of the first episodes of Dukes of Hazzard. For the first episodes there were a total of 8 Dodge Chargers bought by Warner Bros. to be used as General Lees.  The first three Generals were built in California and delivered to Georgia where transportation coordinator John Marendi labeled the cars as Lee 1, 2, and 3.  After filming began in GA, the General Lees were wrecked quickly and it became apparent that more were needed.  Employed by Warner Bros., Don Schisler, one of the original builders of the Georgia General Lees and transportation coordinator for Dukes of Hazzard, bought an additional 5 Chargers for a disaster-bound transformation into General Lees.  After filming ended in Georgia, Don Schisler bought, from Warner Bros., this Dodge Charger which had been previously un-used, on film, for his personal ownership and use as a General Lee.  Since Schisler bought this Charger from Warner Bros. it was not shipped to California, like the other surviving cars which were later used for the continued filming of Dukes of Hazzard.  Because of this, it was able to survive its otherwise doomed fate of being jumped or crashed and becoming “one of the 249 General Lees wrecked during the filming” in the years to come. This particular General Lee disappeared in 1980 when Don Schisler sold the car because of the amount of attention he got with it; people would see the car in his drive-way and actually stop at his home looking for “the Duke boys”!!  The car was sold to private hands and just resurfaced in 2008 when we purchased it. Only about 1500 miles had been put on the car since Schisler sold it in 1980. This Charger is all original as the day it was transformed into a General Lee back in 1979.  It still has its original Flame Orange paint, small push-bar, CB and antenna, roll-bar, Vector wheels and is one of the few General Lees to be wearing its original “01″, “confederate flag” and “GENERAL LEE”  accents that were hand painted by Larry West.  It is a true C6T tan interior car and has a real tan interior, not painted!  This General may have never made its dbut on the screen but its for that reason that it still exists today in its pristine, un-abused condition as when it was originally transformed by “The Generals First Men”. There is a 3 ring binder documenting this cars history, a complete timeline from prior to Warner Bros purchasing the car until present.  Included are notarized bills of sales when Warner Bros purchased the car and when they sold it to Schilser.  In addition to the pile of paperwork, we also have pictures of the car in its original condition, on set, sitting next to Lee 1 (in the pictures, it’s the gold car in the background, the smashed up car is LEE 1).  Because this General was never inventoried as a screen used car, it was sold without any contracts forbidding commercial use. “The Road Back to Early Hazzard”, by Jon Holland is an excellent book filled with a lot of early Georgia Dukes history and the obstacles that the crew had to overcome to make the show possible.  If it were not for these men, who worked around the clock, often sleeping in the back seat of a car, the show would never have become a success and legend it has develop into today.  The book is a great read and includes mention of this, one of the 1st General Lees made.