How Many Cars Were Used in Dukes of Hazzard? 255-325 General Lees

Sources disagree on exactly how many cars the show used, but the figures cluster between about 255 and 325 Dodge Chargers. Ben Jones, who played Cooter, and the show’s builders say 325, according to Wikipedia. Others say about 255. Mental Floss estimates about 300. All of them are talking about the General Lee, the orange 1969 Dodge Charger that jumped, slid and crashed its way through The Dukes of Hazzard on CBS from January 26, 1979 to February 8, 1985.

That is seven seasons and 147 episodes, not six as many fan pages say. The reason the count is so fuzzy is simple: nobody kept a public ledger of every Charger bought, rebuilt, wrecked and crushed. Below you will find each figure with who said it, what the numbers mean per episode, why cars were wrecked so fast, how many survive, and what the one well-documented sale looked like.

What Car Was the General Lee?

The General Lee was a 1969 Dodge Charger. Wikipedia reports that creator Gy Waldron first thought about a Pontiac Firebird, but stunt coordinator Al Wyatt Sr. chose the Charger because he had already used three of them in the 1974 film Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. Some 1968 Chargers were also converted to look like 1969 models.

Detail	What the sources say
Base car	1969 Dodge Charger, a two-door coupe (Wikipedia)
Engines	318, 383 and 440 cubic-inch V8s; none of the TV cars had the 426 Hemi (Wikipedia)
Transmission	Mostly 727 TorqueFlite automatics; only a handful of manuals (Wikipedia)
Ballast	500 to 1,000 pounds in the trunk to keep the nose from diving on landing (Wikipedia)
Roll cages	Only LEE 1 and LEE 2 had full roll cages (Wikipedia)
First filming	Covington and Conyers, Georgia, November and December 1978, with five Chargers (Wikipedia)

Those five Georgia cars were built by Warner Bros. and shipped to the location, where three of them were labeled LEE 1, LEE 2 and LEE 3. After the first five episodes production moved to California, mostly Hidden Valley in Thousand Oaks, and the car supply moved with it.

How Many Cars Were Used in Dukes of Hazzard?

There is no single audited number, so the honest answer is a range. The table lists every figure we found, who stated it, and what it implies. The per-episode column is our own arithmetic: the figure divided by the show’s 147 episodes.

Figure	Source	Per episode	Note
325 Chargers	Ben Jones and the show’s builders, as reported by Wikipedia	about 2.2	The highest figure from people close to the show
About 255 Chargers	“Others,” unnamed, per Wikipedia	about 1.7	The lowest figure; no source is named for it
About 300 Chargers	Mental Floss, 2012	about 2.0	Described as an estimate; no source named
320 Chargers	Motorious, “reportedly employed”	about 2.2	Repeats a commonly quoted total
250 to 355 cars	Wikipedia, The Dukes of Hazzard article	1.7 to 2.4	A wider range that covers every vehicle on the show, not only General Lees
More than one per episode	Wikipedia, General Lee article	over 1.0	“Discarded,” not necessarily built new
Two per episode	Mental Floss	2.0	Average number of Chargers totaled per episode

You will also see 309 online. We could not trace that number to a page we were able to open, so it is not in the table.

Two details explain much of the disagreement. First, “used” is not the same as “destroyed.” Mental Floss reports that the most damaged cars were stripped for doors, roofs and engine parts, while less damaged Chargers were rebuilt, repainted and reused as background “bucks” for town and chase scenes. So one body could appear in several roles. Second, counts differ on whether stunt cars, background cars and later replacements count as General Lees at all. A 255 and a 325 can both be defensible if they count different things.

Why Were So Many Dukes of Hazzard Cars Destroyed?

Jumps did most of the damage. Mental Floss counts more than 150 jumps over the series and says Warner Bros. totaled an average of two Chargers per episode. Wikipedia adds that the cars used for large jumps were retired immediately because of structural damage, and that some flights exceeded 40 feet. A heavy car landing flat on its suspension is hard on a unibody built for the street, and the trunk ballast, 500 to 1,000 pounds, made landings harder still.

Supply was the other half of the story. Early on, Wikipedia says, builders found Chargers easy to buy. Later it became harder, and production even hired Piper Cub planes to spot donor cars from the air. Wikipedia also says it became too hard or expensive to keep buying Chargers in Southern California. Motorious cites a price of about 1,600 dollars per car, which fits the picture of cheap used Chargers bought to be sacrificed.

By the later seasons, radio-controlled miniature cars replaced many of the large jumps, which Wikipedia says some directors, including Tom Wopat, disliked.

Do not read any of this as a how-to. These were professionally built, ballasted and caged stunt vehicles, and even then most were not repairable. If you want a sense of why a street car cannot do the same, our look at whether a car can jump a truck covers the physics. The full General Lee story has the character and flag history.

Why Were the General Lee’s Doors Welded Shut?

A common explanation is that the doors were welded for structural strength. According to Wikipedia, it started by accident. During the first chase scene a door handle was damaged and the door could not be opened from outside, so Tom Wopat climbed through the window. The director liked the move, and the show then explained it as racing-style welded doors, much like a stock car. Treat the structural-rigidity version as a myth: the sources we read do not support it.

How Many Original General Lee Cars Still Exist?

Wikipedia says about 17 originals still exist, in various states of repair. A second source gives the likely origin of that number. Mental Floss reports that after the show ended Warner Bros. left 18 General Lees at the set, where they sat for years, and in 1991 sold 17 of them to private owners. We could not confirm what happened to the 18th. Because the number comes from two sources that may share a root, treat 17 as an approximation, not a registry count.

Survivors are more varied than the number suggests. Motorious describes one big-block R/T used in the show’s last three seasons, mostly for burnouts and high-speed scenes rather than jumps, as the most significant surviving car, a claim that comes from the car’s owner and a YouTube channel rather than an independent registry. For another famous screen car with a traceable history, see where the Bonnie and Clyde car is today.

What Has a Screen-Used General Lee Sold For?

Prices that circulate online are rarely sourced. The best documented sale we found is LEE 1, the Georgia second-unit car with a full roll cage and a 383 V8 that made the famous jump over Rosco’s cruiser, driven by stuntman Craig Baxley. Wikipedia says it sold to golfer Bubba Watson at the 2012 Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction for 110,000 dollars, or 121,000 including the buyer’s premium. Mental Floss separately reports that a car found in a Georgia junkyard in 2001 was restored and sold for 110,000 dollars; the two reports may or may not be the same car.

The flag on the roof has since shaped the car’s market and its owners’ choices. In June 2015 Warner Bros. said it would stop licensing replicas and toys of the General Lee with the flag, and Wikipedia says Watson announced he would paint over the roof flag, which he confirmed in 2020. Auction results before and after that point are not directly comparable.

The 2005 film used about 24 Chargers from 1968 to 1970, Wikipedia says, and eleven of them were bought from the Luedtke Auto Group. Those are movie cars, not cars from the original series.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many cars were used in Dukes of Hazzard?

Sources disagree. Wikipedia’s General Lee article says Ben Jones (who played Cooter) and the show’s car builders put the total at 325, while others say about 255. Mental Floss estimates about 300, and Motorious says 320 were reportedly used. Wikipedia’s article on the show gives a wider 250 to 355 range for all cars. No source we read gives a documented, audited count.

What kind of car was the General Lee?

A 1969 Dodge Charger. Wikipedia notes that some 1968 Chargers were also converted to look like 1969 models. The cars carried 318, 383 or 440 cubic-inch V8 engines and mostly used the 727 TorqueFlite automatic. None of the TV cars had the 426 Hemi.

Why were the doors welded shut on the General Lee?

Per Wikipedia, it began by accident. During the first chase scene a door handle was damaged and the door could not be opened from outside, so Tom Wopat climbed through the window. The director liked the bit and it stayed, with the show explaining it as racing-car style welded doors.

How many original General Lee cars still exist?

Wikipedia says about 17 originals still exist in various states of repair. Mental Floss reports that Warner Bros. left 18 General Lees on the set after the show ended and sold 17 of them to private owners in 1991.

What has a screen-used General Lee sold for?

The best documented sale in the sources we read is LEE 1, which Wikipedia says sold to golfer Bubba Watson at the 2012 Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction for 110,000 dollars (121,000 with buyer’s premium). Mental Floss separately reports that a car found in a Georgia junkyard in 2001 was restored and sold for 110,000 dollars.

Conclusion

The General Lee count is a range, not a fact: about 255 to 325 Chargers depending on who is counting and what counts. The better takeaway is the pattern. The show wrecked roughly one to two cars per episode, reused and rebuilt what it could, and left about 17 survivors. Just as useful is knowing which popular claims fail: the show ran seven seasons, not six, and the doors were not welded for rigidity.