This 1969 Dodge Charger General Lee Tribute Has the Dixie Horn, the Bow and Arrows, and the Cast's AutographsFinding Old CarsElizabeth PuckettWed, September 16, 2026 at 1:37 PM UTCAdd us on GoogleThis 1969 Dodge Charger General Lee Tribute Has the Dixie Horn, the Bow and Arrows, and the Cast's AutographsThere are famous cars, and then there is the General Lee. For six seasons of The Dukes of Hazzard, an orange 1969 Dodge Charger spent most of its screen time sideways, airborne, or both, and it did more for the reputation of Chrysler's B-body than any ad Dodge ever ran. The 281st episode of Classic Car ChitChat catches up with one owner's tribute to that car, and this one goes a good deal deeper than orange paint and a set of decals.Host Kevin's walkaround runs about fifteen minutes and works the car over from the outside in: exterior styling, engine and powertrain, interior details, and then a test drive with the moment everyone waits for, which is of course the Dixie horn.A tribute built out of details, not decalsThe owner's connection to the show goes back decades, and it shows up in what rides along with the car. There is a vintage bow and arrows, the Duke boys' weapon of choice once network standards ruled handguns out of a family show. There is moonshine memorabilia nodding to Hazzard County's best-known cottage industry. There are period-correct accessories throughout the car. And then there is the real prize: authentic cast signatures, collected in person over many years.AdvertisementAdvertisementThat last part is what separates this Charger from the many General Lee tributes built since the series went off the air in 1985. Anyone can order a decal kit and a set of steel wheels. Far fewer people spend a couple of decades turning up at appearances and shows, meeting the people who made the show, and getting them to sign the car.Why the 1969 Charger was worth the troubleThe second-generation Charger, built from 1968 through 1970, is on the short list of best-looking cars Detroit ever produced: coke-bottle hips, hidden headlights behind a full-width grille, and that flying-buttress fastback roofline. For 1969 Dodge split the grille with a center divider and stretched the taillights, and the R/T came with the 440 Magnum as standard equipment, with the 426 Hemi sitting on the option sheet for anyone brave enough.Dodge built roughly 89,000 Chargers for 1969, which sounds like plenty until you account for what happened to them on television. Estimates of how many Chargers were wrecked, burned, or bent beyond repair over the run of the show generally land north of 300 cars, and the crews were buying them off used lots and out of front yards to keep up.Every one of those jumps made the next surviving Charger more expensive. A clean, correct 1969 car is a serious collector piece today, and the rare configurations have gone somewhere else entirely, as we saw with one of only two surviving 1972 Charger 440 Six Pack cars and the 1965 Dodge Coronet 500 convertible that set a new auction record this summer. Building a tribute on a solid driver-quality Charger has become the sane way to get an orange Mopar in the garage.Tribute, clone, or the genuine articleThe hobby argues endlessly about where a tribute ends and a misrepresentation begins, and we ran straight into the sharp end of that debate with the fire-gutted 1970 Plymouth Superbird 440+6 that came back to life on a fresh Road Runner body. A General Lee neatly sidesteps the whole problem. Dodge never built one. Every General Lee that has ever existed, including the ones that flew over creeks on Friday nights, was somebody's build, so a well-executed tribute is not pretending to be anything other than what it is.And then there is the hornThe Dixie horn plays the first twelve notes of the tune it is named for, and as the story goes, someone on the production heard it on a passing car in Georgia during filming and bought it off the driver on the spot. True or not, the sound ended up as much a character in the show as anyone in the cast. Kevin saves it for the test drive segment, which starts at the 14:43 mark.AdvertisementAdvertisementMopars with a story attached tend to hold up better than the ones without, whether that story is a rescue, like the 1968 Dodge Dart GTS convertible a New Jersey family found rotting in the woods 35 years after they sold it, or a warning, like the eight rare Mopar convertibles slowly going back to the earth in a Missouri field. This Charger sits at the other end of that spectrum entirely: a car built on purpose and kept on purpose by somebody who has been paying attention since 1979.Watch the full walkaround above, and give Classic Car ChitChat a look while you are there. Kevin has been shining a light on other people's cars for 281 videos now, which is its own kind of devotion.