Kit: MPC ERTL General Lee 1969 Dodge Charger 1/24 Scale
Ah, the Dukes of Hazzard. So few shows or movies had such an impact on my love for cars. I had the ERTL 1/64 die cast cars and went through several of them with all my ‘Duke Boys’ adventures. The General Lee is an ’80s icon.
I had actually made an attempt at a General Lee sometime in high school by trying to convert a Plymouth GTX kit into a Charger. It had working pen spring suspension and aside from not looking exactly like a Charger, it was pretty neat. I jumped it a lot and eventually it was just junk.
Well anyway eventually in the late ’90s Dukes of Hazzard was on re-runs on TNN (which became SPIKE TV in 2004) and ERTL re-released this kit that had a Charger 500 body, that is the rear deck was rounded off and had a different window. The Charger 500’s are really rare so I can see why they would have made a kit at one time.
I couldn’t let that stand as-is so I got out the styrene and modified the rear deck area to be just like it’s supposed to be. It took a lot of work mostly from having to figure out the angles of the plastic parts and so forth. Much to my dismay and delight, Monogram released a beautiful ’69 Charger RT kit a year or two later with the regular body style. Figures. I also somehow forgot to paint the rear valance black.
The hood doesn’t really fit all that well, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it.
I think the interior came out pretty nicely. Watching the series reveals the car had several different interior colors and schemes, so I chose a nice tan color with black roll cage. Considering how wrong the body style is the interior had nice details like seat belts (did they ever wear them?) and good dashboard detail.
The engine is all there but pretty basic compared to the Monogram kit. Not that we saw the engine a whole lot during the series anyway, but I wish I’d have found it first.
Sad to say but this car, through several moves over the years, eventually got destroyed. I still plan to make a new even better version of the car. R.I.P. As many times as I have made this car in 1/64 scale I sometimes forget I don’t currently have one in a larger scale!