The 2017 Detroit Autorama opened with a classic Dodge Charger painted as the General Lee flying through the sky outside of Cobo Hall where the show is held. Technically it opened with the Charger smashing to the ground and being totaled beyond anyone’s expectation but it seems that show promoters got what they wanted with a big crowd and lots of social media action on the jump. Maybe we just need to give ourselves an old, “Lighten up, Francis” moment here but seeing yet another Charger destroyed kind of turns our stomach.
Those cars are worth big money in even rotted states now and while we love the Dukes of Hazzard and were as hooked on it as kids as the rest of the country, this just seems like a kick in the nuts to us. Inside Cobo are some of the most beautiful and awesome hot rods ever built and some of the greatest homebuilt creations no one has ever seen yet are just waiting to be discovered. Notice the two themes there. Building and creation. Those are the anthesis of flying a Charger off of ramps and destroying it.
Maybe it just caught us on a bad day or we’re getting old or something but they could have just as easily done this with something, anything other than an old Charger. Are we wrong about that? Do we just need to get over ourselves? We probably know the answer to that question already.
Really, really well thought out. Sold furniture in tha 80’s to make extra bucks. One afternoon I was getting a box out of the warehouse for a women, “where’s your car?” ” It’s the one over there with the kid sitting on the roof”… ” He’s playing Dukes of Hazard.” WTF?…you can’t make this shit up! 🙁 🙂
um, what the heck ? I don’t understand why someone would think this is a great idea. Besides potential for driver to get hurt simply for a cheap thrill there is one less Charger for people to cherish and drive with pride. I am a Mustang guy but wouldn’t hesitate to own one of these if it was affordable. The only upside is I can probably afford this one now lol.
I guess they forgot to put the concrete in the trunk. What a bunch of assclowns. What? We haven’t discussed enough how stupid is was to wreck so many Chargers making that unwatchably stupid TV show, that decades later we feel the need to destroy another Charger? I need to go find a Yenko Camaro and run over it with a bulldozer just to make myself feel clean again…
Stupid stunt from a stupid promoter. Now there is one less ’69 Dodge Charger with potential to be something other than another “General Lee”.
TRUST me! I hate seeing Chargers demolished as well…but have you ever seen the builds the Northeast Ohio Dukes do? These cars are HASHED and not really rebuildable. They are patching up stuff with gallons of bondo and zipties. They go out of their way to only use the worst of the worst to build their jump cars. I am hoping it is the same with this one…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KdHbjsQBIU
No photos of the aftermath?
I’ll give them this…the stunt did it’s job…they got big attention on social media, but…
Why not do the same thing with a brand new Charger? Paint it Orange, put a 01 on the side…let her fly!
This way, us hardcore, musclecar lovers, don’t have nightmares!
The cars these guys are using are so far gone that you wouldn’t want it restored.
I would feel ripped off I knew somebody restored a car that bad!
This car was beyond restoration, as are all of the jump cars they build. These jump cars are patched up and layered with body filler enough to make it look pretty. Any salvageable parts after the jump are used for another jump car. These jump cars are rusted beyond saving, with no titles and no useful parts for a restoration. Not every car is worth saving. When the cost to restore a car exceeds the value of said car, its time to cut losses and move on.
What happens when they run out of “unrestorable rusty cars” there is not an infinite supply of these things. If they are that good with the filler why not make one out of filler and mount it on an old pickup chassis. Everybody thinks it’s a charger but no real chargers get hurt.
Have the guys who jump these so-called “unrestorable” wrecks never seen the Roadkill General Mayhem Charger? Just because it can never be a 100 point concours car doesn’t mean it’s only good for destroying.
Not a MOPAR fan, but really – why? something like that would guarantee that I wouldn’t go to the show. Why not do it with a new ‘charger’? that’d actually be kind of cool to watch and would do a nice tie-in with history. That? what’s the point? (maybe outside of finding the one time I give a damn about a mopar).
I saw this car on Thursday night prior to the jump and it truly was a bondo filled heap. The front and rear lights and grill flat panels with decals. you could see the road through the passenger floor and the rear axle through the floor where the rear seat was. The spectacular thing about this whole escapade was the safety issue. This thing was a death trap. The guy was lucky to walk away after that crazy jump!
Just F’ing stupid.
Almost “roadkill” stupid.
Just what i was thinking. Bangshift gushes about whatever ignorant thing roadkill is trashing each month then worries about 1 more Charger losing its life?
Too bad it didn’t land on one of the promoters.
Don’t cry cause that car was a heap before it hit the ramp!
Seeing these crashed is getting painful to watch. Yes, I’m a Dukes fan, loved the show as a kid, and still love the Chargers. While it’s fun to see them jump it hurts to see them wrecked, regardless of how rusty and quickly patched up they may have been before the stunt. A simple solution would be to use a landing ramp and have the car survive. In the shows and movies the General (almost always) landed and continued driving on. It was the cop cars and bad guys that always seemed to crash.