For the great republic it is, America sure loves nobility titles: garage queen, Kings of the Road, Country Squires, the Iron Duke, and the Dukes of Hazzard (the enumeration has no particular order, and the list remains open). The former is probably the most intriguing since a fictional character spurred a real following and made the 1969 Dodge Charger a legend.
Dodge had it rough with the first generation of the Charger despite the car’s outstanding looks, luxurious comfort, and a broad range of horsepower offers. Less than 50,000 units were sold in the first two years of the model’s production, 1966-1967. Then along came 1968, and the moniker, heavily redesigned and firmly positioned as a full-blown muscle car, took center stage on the Bullitt block-buster poster.
The car was so important to the movie – despite its meteoric appearance and abrupt ending – that it put Steve McQueen in the shadow, along with the 1968 Mustang GT that the King of Cool (here’s another nobility rank right there!) drove during in the film. Sales skyrocketed to over 96,000 units, and the trend continued in 1969 when the iconic split grille was introduced.
The unmistakable face of the second-generation ’69 Charger became a pop-culture superstar in the 1980s with the Warner Bros. TV series The Dukes of Hazzard. In short, two modern outlaws engage in endless adventures and epic car chases with the local police in fictional Hazzard County, Georgia. The orange Charger the Duke brothers drive is one of the main characters of the series, appearing in 146 of the 147 episodes.
The show’s popularity has given rise to a cult for the General Lee – that’s the car’s name in the movie – and, just as it happens in these cases, many hardcore gearheads with solid wrenching skills have dedicated time, energy, and money into either getting one of the surviving cars from the movie’s filming carpool or have built one of their own.
The latter is far more expensive and out of reach than the former. However, putting together a replica is not finger-snapping-easy, either. Particularly when the base is a rough ’69 that needs much work. But never underestimate a car nut – he’ll leave to nut unrestored, if need be, to make his dream a reality.
The example featured in the video below, shot on location by Parker Blubaugh, frontman of Backyard Barn Finds YouTube channel, got to exist as a tribute to the famous movie star Mopar. There is, however, one major difference between the original TV show cars and this Eastern Tennessee copy: the 6.1-liter HEMI V8 upfront. The power came out of a third-gen Dodge Challenger that sits disemboweled and dismembered on the hill behind the owner’s garage. Play the second video to hear the 425-hp, 420-lb-ft HEMI (431 PS, 570 Nm) V8 rumble after a cold start.
The man has gathered a few nice cars over the years, most of them bought as parts cars – at one point, he owned a dozen second-gen Charger corpses, but now he’s down to just four. Two are a pile of Chrysler metal barely holding on, with enough missing parts to make identifying them a detective's work. The third one is sitting atop a box, heavily butchered but pretty solid overall. And the fourth is a work-in-progress that saw the shell getting a new floor pan and the trunk still waiting for its turn.
The car does come with an engine (a 440-cube / 7.2-liter V8 that’s safely stored indoors), and it is for sale, for those interested, with an asking price of around ‘fifteen’ (the owner’s words). I would assume 15,000 dollars, which is well within the market value of this model (I’ve seen rust buckets in far worse condition ask twice as much). The car was originally a 383 big block with a column shifter.
The final Charger in the collection is the General Lee, but that’s not part of the junkyard collection; that’s why it's not accounted for in the roll call. The gearhead who owns the junkyard is not a Mopar fanatic; he also has a bunch of Chevys stuffed up the hills in the forest, like a few Camaros, a C5 Corvette, a Chevy Van 108, as well as other GMs, like a Pontiac Ventura, a few Firebirds (two Trans Ams, a Formula), a classic 1958 Buick Special, or a roast Cadillac CTS-V that had a bad case of heatstroke at some point.
The engine from the Caddy now proudly sits inside a super-rare 1970 Chevrolet Nova. The Chevy compact production that year rose to over 307,000 units, but only a handful came with four-cylinder engines from the factory. 2,062, to be exact, out of which 1,881 were two-door coupes and 181 four-door sedans.
The example featured below is one of those rare birds that now sports a 400+ horsepower dowry, courtesy of Cadillac’s L6 V8. The Nova was the second post-war American car to feature a four-piston motor, after the Pontiac Tempest and its half-V8 slanted engine from the early sixties.
Another cool car is also a Mopar with a neat story; a 1969 Plymouth Fury four-door sedan (by all accounts, a Fury III) with just six thousand original miles when pulled up on the hill. The drivetrain was removed by the owner (a friend of the man who owns the property where the full-size Plymouth now sits) to be used someplace else. The man only needed the go parts from the Fury; the body didn’t interest him, so here it sits, waiting to be ripped apart for someone else’s money pit, Mopar.
There is one small-block drag racer Camaro in the collection, neatly stored indoors, a rowdy real-deal Super Sport from 1968 that holds a personal record of 6.60 seconds. I’d love to know more about its past – and its engine – but the owner didn’t go into details about it, other than that the car sat for two long decades before he got it.
[YOUTUBE=https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6ku8Yujkxno?feature=share]
The car was so important to the movie – despite its meteoric appearance and abrupt ending – that it put Steve McQueen in the shadow, along with the 1968 Mustang GT that the King of Cool (here’s another nobility rank right there!) drove during in the film. Sales skyrocketed to over 96,000 units, and the trend continued in 1969 when the iconic split grille was introduced.
The unmistakable face of the second-generation ’69 Charger became a pop-culture superstar in the 1980s with the Warner Bros. TV series The Dukes of Hazzard. In short, two modern outlaws engage in endless adventures and epic car chases with the local police in fictional Hazzard County, Georgia. The orange Charger the Duke brothers drive is one of the main characters of the series, appearing in 146 of the 147 episodes.
The latter is far more expensive and out of reach than the former. However, putting together a replica is not finger-snapping-easy, either. Particularly when the base is a rough ’69 that needs much work. But never underestimate a car nut – he’ll leave to nut unrestored, if need be, to make his dream a reality.
The example featured in the video below, shot on location by Parker Blubaugh, frontman of Backyard Barn Finds YouTube channel, got to exist as a tribute to the famous movie star Mopar. There is, however, one major difference between the original TV show cars and this Eastern Tennessee copy: the 6.1-liter HEMI V8 upfront. The power came out of a third-gen Dodge Challenger that sits disemboweled and dismembered on the hill behind the owner’s garage. Play the second video to hear the 425-hp, 420-lb-ft HEMI (431 PS, 570 Nm) V8 rumble after a cold start.
The car does come with an engine (a 440-cube / 7.2-liter V8 that’s safely stored indoors), and it is for sale, for those interested, with an asking price of around ‘fifteen’ (the owner’s words). I would assume 15,000 dollars, which is well within the market value of this model (I’ve seen rust buckets in far worse condition ask twice as much). The car was originally a 383 big block with a column shifter.
The final Charger in the collection is the General Lee, but that’s not part of the junkyard collection; that’s why it's not accounted for in the roll call. The gearhead who owns the junkyard is not a Mopar fanatic; he also has a bunch of Chevys stuffed up the hills in the forest, like a few Camaros, a C5 Corvette, a Chevy Van 108, as well as other GMs, like a Pontiac Ventura, a few Firebirds (two Trans Ams, a Formula), a classic 1958 Buick Special, or a roast Cadillac CTS-V that had a bad case of heatstroke at some point.
The example featured below is one of those rare birds that now sports a 400+ horsepower dowry, courtesy of Cadillac’s L6 V8. The Nova was the second post-war American car to feature a four-piston motor, after the Pontiac Tempest and its half-V8 slanted engine from the early sixties.
Another cool car is also a Mopar with a neat story; a 1969 Plymouth Fury four-door sedan (by all accounts, a Fury III) with just six thousand original miles when pulled up on the hill. The drivetrain was removed by the owner (a friend of the man who owns the property where the full-size Plymouth now sits) to be used someplace else. The man only needed the go parts from the Fury; the body didn’t interest him, so here it sits, waiting to be ripped apart for someone else’s money pit, Mopar.
There is one small-block drag racer Camaro in the collection, neatly stored indoors, a rowdy real-deal Super Sport from 1968 that holds a personal record of 6.60 seconds. I’d love to know more about its past – and its engine – but the owner didn’t go into details about it, other than that the car sat for two long decades before he got it.
[YOUTUBE=https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6ku8Yujkxno?feature=share]