General Lee vs. the Bandit.

[Ishmael]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9kW7OBXsXck

Forgive me if this is a repost. In reality this would be no contest. The General would win but its fun anyway.

[79-TA]

pfft. Bandit, 185 hp Olds 403 and all, all the way.

[absintheisfun]

Great video...thanks for sharing!

9kW7OBXsXck

[Johnny Blaze]

Sweet! Good driving there!

[critter]

Both cars are owned by Mark Osborne. He is a member of the Arkansas Pontiac Association, my car club. Most of the filming was done on his families property just outside of Little Rock.

The cars took a beating in order to make this video but he felt it was a once in a lifetime chance to do so away they went. Wait for the story in Hot Rod. Especially the part where the cops showed up and they convinced them to help out.

[tylers88]

that was awesome and its a toss up because the Genral is one of the first cars I saw and wanted (I think I was 5 or 6 when I saw the Dukes for the first time), but I LOVE the Bandit T/A

[SS PUNISHER]

The 01!!! Can't be better than #1....

[Mr. Anderson]

This guy would take em both :)
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2011/08/1968mustangbullitt-1.jpg

[TT302Z28]

A mustang?.......Really? I mean I know which one it is but still....a mustang?

[SS PUNISHER]

This guy would take em both :)
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2011/08/1968mustangbullitt-1.jpg
This guy will take them all!!!
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2011/08/mcqueen-1.jpg

KA CHOW!!!!!

[mikedc]

Frank Bullitt was barely keeping up with the bad guys in a stock Charger R/T.

I imagine the Duke boys & Cooter put more muscle under the General's hood & chassis than the factory did.

[trapin]

Yeah, gotta think the Duke boys (in theory) would have had a hemi in The General Lee. Maybe the T/A would have had the upper hand in the dirt but once they hit pavement it would have been The General all the way.

I'd like to see a race been Roscoe's Basset Hound and Snowman's Bassett Hound. LOL.

[Mr. Anderson]

The General never had a Hemi in it until they turned that into a movie. And setting aside the numerous different engines in the cars used for filming, the hero cars had a 383. Considering the amount of off-road exploitations, I bet it worked better not having to toss an elephant around every corner and jump.

[Slick68]

Did I miss something, or does that General have 68 taillights?

Cool vid. That looked like alot of fun.

[go-fish]

I'd like to see a race been Roscoe's Basset Hound and Snowman's Bassett Hound. LOL.

What kind of race would they be in? Which one could lay around the longest? LOLz

Let's face it. If this were "real", any car that passes the General will get a heapin' heplin' of flamin' arrow's to the back tires. Ya'll come on back!




(For the record, typing like a redneck requires a lot of words to be cut off at the last "n". Sheesh, the puncty-ation is killin' me!)

[ChevelleNV]

Both cars are owned by Mark Osborne. He is a member of the Arkansas Pontiac Association, my car club. Most of the filming was done on his families property just outside of Little Rock.

The cars took a beating in order to make this video but he felt it was a once in a lifetime chance to do so away they went. Wait for the story in Hot Rod. Especially the part where the cops showed up and they convinced them to help out.

That's awesome that he allowed them to get beat up a little for something so cool, he gets a thumbs up from me on that...

[mikedc]

Yeah, gotta think the Duke boys (in theory) would have had a hemi in The General Lee. Maybe the T/A would have had the upper hand in the dirt but once they hit pavement it would have been The General all the way.


The General never had a Hemi in it until they turned that into a movie. And setting aside the numerous different engines in the cars used for filming, the hero cars had a 383. Considering the amount of off-road exploitations, I bet it worked better not having to toss an elephant around every corner and jump.


I'm not trying to tear down the T/As, but the GL would have kicked the Bandit's butt on any surface.

The Charger is no heavier than the T/A. A 440/auto General Lee weighed 3700 lbs. The Charger's unibody is a very stiff design for its era and it has no rubber-isolated front subframe. The suspension geometry is probably at least equal between them. The charger has decent negative camber gain & roll centers from the factory. And the Charger's got it all over the T/A in the power department, even with a 440 or 383 rather than a Hemi. There's no reason for the Charger not to win this one every time.


You guys have a point about the Hemi being a boat-anchor up front. The "Dukes" TV mechanics discovered that a 383 was heavy enough to crush its motor mounts if you jumped it more than about 5 vertical feet. The Hemi weighs more than that. That's one of the (several) reasons the TV General Lees ran wedge-head motors.

[72BBSwinger]

Its funny someone brought up Bullitt because their is a story behind why a Charger was even used in that movie to begin with. And its reputation from that very movie lead to why Hollywood used one as the General Lee as well.

[79-TA]

Yeah, gotta think the Duke boys (in theory) would have had a hemi in The General Lee. Maybe the T/A would have had the upper hand in the dirt but once they hit pavement it would have been The General all the way.

I'd like to see a race been Roscoe's Basset Hound and Snowman's Bassett Hound. LOL.

The General Lee was known to have a 440, not a hemi. Still a nice potent big block.

I'd guess the opposite, General on dirt, and the TA on the asphalt, assuming it had some decent corners. Chargers were, in fact, usually heavier than TA's (the heaviest TA with every option known to man is 3800 lbs . . . mine is 3470.) From my limited experience with stock chargers, they're big ponderous feeling cars. Not so much for the TA.

The General's power isn't that big of a deal, unless you had a nice really long straight section of pavement to hook up on. And if you want to talk replacement tires on stock wheels, the TA was available with 8 inch wide wheels and could stuff a lot more rubber than the general, Granted, the General did have aftermarket wheels and tires . . . which were only 14x7's wearing 235/70/14's. Trans Ams came with 225/70/15's stock.


But my summary is as follows:

Cooter and Luke preprared General beats the stock TA (this assumes more is done to the charger than ever actually was)

stock TA takes any midly set up Charger or General Lee replica.

[mikedc]

The General Lee was known to have a 440, not a hemi. Still a nice potent big block.

I'd guess the opposite, General on dirt, and the TA on the asphalt, assuming it had some decent corners. Chargers were, in fact, usually heavier than TA's (the heaviest TA with every option known to man is 3800 lbs . . . mine is 3470.) From my limited experience with stock chargers, they're big ponderous feeling cars. Not so much for the TA.

The General's power isn't that big of a deal, unless you had a nice really long straight section of pavement to hook up on. And if you want to talk replacement tires on stock wheels, the TA was available with 8 inch wide wheels and could stuff a lot more rubber than the general, Granted, the General did have aftermarket wheels and tires . . . which were only 14x7's wearing 235/70/14's. Trans Ams came with 225/70/15's stock.


But my summary is as follows:

Cooter and Luke preprared General beats the stock TA (this assumes more is done to the charger than ever actually was)

stock TA takes any midly set up Charger or General Lee replica.


I have to disagree. I'll grant that a stock Charger might lose to a lighter weight stock T/A, because of handling differences. But I think an upgraded Charger would win most every time.


There was a pretty big spread between the various GL setups among the TV-series cars. It was most commonly a near-stock car with a heavy big block. But other times it was something much better done.

The wheels were 14x7 most commonly but they ran some bigger stuff too. Bigger wheels on the rear end were not too unusual. Sometimes they even had cars with 15x8.5" rims on all four corners. They usually stiffened the rear springs & added aftermarket shocks.

There were a couple times during the series where the show's producers paid for a really hot GL to be built for one reason or another. One had rollcage that tied into the front shock towers & rear spring mounts, a REALLY hot 340" smallblock, and multiple shocks per wheel. Another hot Charger had subframe connectors, shock tower braces, Koni shocks, a mildly warmed-over 440, and lowered axle gearing. These cars never survived more than a few months but they got a lot of screen time while they were alive.

[go-fish]

I think you can throw everything that has to do with what the show people ACTUALLY did to these cars. This is a theoretical discussion that would be pitting a Cooter prepared GL, not Warner Bros. , against what was a stock T/A. If it was hopped up I never heard how it was prepared because in the movie Bandit simply asked for an advance on his Coors running money to buy a "speedy" car.

So, between a C-prep General and stock T/A, driver's being a real NASCAR driver, Bo Duke, and phenomenal truck driver, Bo "Bandit" Darville, I take the Cooter prepped General and bonified NASCAR driver Beureguard Duke any day.

The real winner is me, because if we are playing "Fantasy Land" I get into Daisy's Jeep with her after the race and we go down to the Hazard slew for a nice romantic night in front of a campfire and "The Gentle Giant" Don Williams on the AM radio and make little redneck babies!

[Mr. Anderson]

Yep, I agree the Cooter-tuned Lee would win against the showroom stock Bandit without question.

[MonzaRacer]

OK first of all the Dukes built the 440 in high school shop but never finished the project, then to run 'shine to the government test for alternative fuels they built "The General". It WAS built as a dirt track car because they all used to run dirt tracks,,,before getting caught by Feds, promising to never make 'shine again.
NOW as for The Bandit, it WAS NOT showroom stock, and did not have a 403. The cars had Pontiac 400s and Bandit DID have it built, while a lot of people have things wrong, about both, the 1976 TAs used were Pontiac powered, but were upgraded to TH400s so as to stay together as mid 70s TH350s had major longevity issues.
I talked to a fella who helped set the cars up AT GM, They got 3 TAs, and 2 Bonnevilles. All of the cars were full on TAs with 400s but had HD engines, ala 400s with SD rods and forged pistons,,,all off the shelf, this guy had pictures of the cars, some signed by Burt and Sally as he helped keep them going on the set.
They trashed the first TA in the bridge jump and had to rob parts off of it to keep all of them running. NOW odd ball thing was neither of the cop cars that they got new matched, one was plain jane 350pontiac 2 bbl the other one was a 400 4bbl cop option that was dropped from a truck so it was fixed and sent to theset.
Neat thing, honestly I really feel both cars would be pretty closely matched in actuality.
Brute Pontiac torque of a 400 with good off the shelf heads and Ram Air 3/4 hydraulic cam (the one odd ball hydraulic cam Pontiac had for one year in production) and larger Caddy Qjets! and the TAs had no emissions exhaust, true dual, no cats, and headers.
None of the first movies cars fully survived intact. The last true news was that car 2 and 3 had so many parts mixed they just used the bodt tag when it was gotten rid of.
This is from one of the set mechanics.
As for the General well only one original General ,the one used for close ups actually survived, but had major surgery to fix damage from shows.
And as for the jump cars according to the book I have only about 5 cars were ever driven under power for jumps, the rest were "jump cars" most didnt even have running engines.

[evostilo]

Nice Video, Bandit should have tup his t-tops on cuz all the dust was going in side LOL but it wouldnt have beeen as COOL!

[go-fish]

GD it, Lee Abel! THEORETICALLY speaking! Not what GM did to these T/A's or what Warner Bro.'s did to the Dodge. IN THE MOVIE, truck driver Bo "Bandit" Darville asks for an advance on his $80,000 from the brothers who make the beer running proposition so he can buy a "speedy" car. Where did he get it. What your buddy did at GM means nothing. The movie does not state that it is hopped up. It's just "speedy".

The fact that one car had it's crew chief, more or less, in Cooter and the fact that Bo Dukes character was in NASCAR at some level of professional driving is what is important to our whole, fake, conversation.

Truck driver in "speedy" car that was bought from unknown source OR NASCAR playboy in a car that has it's own crew chief? You MAY add in the fact that the latter has a maniacal Redneck cousin hanging out of the passenger window with a fuggin' bow and air-uh with explodin' tips!

[Mr. Anderson]

For the sake of argument, Detective Frank Bullitt had surely hopped up his 390 in the '68 fastback. Not much on a cop's salary, but if he could afford the Torq Thrust D's he had to have had a few hop up parts under the hood. That sucks was not stock! I say he'd be in the running.

[go-fish]

I am not a Mustang fan at all but I do have to give it to you Mr. Anderson, I enjoy the chase scenes in Bullit far more than S& The B or the D-boyz. It's actually in that order; The San Francisco Treat, Bandit, then D-Boyz.
However, for the sake of our fictional race all the chips fall the the D-Boyz favor. If they didn't have Cooter then I would lean toward Officer Bullit.

[Derek69SS]

GD it, Lee Abel! THEORETICALLY speaking! Not what GM did to these T/A's or what Warner Bro.'s did to the Dodge. IN THE MOVIE, truck driver Bo "Bandit" Darville asks for an advance on his $80,000 from the brothers who make the beer running proposition so he can buy a "speedy" car. Where did he get it. What your buddy did at GM means nothing. The movie does not state that it is hopped up. It's just "speedy".

If he had time to get personalized "BAN ONE" license plates, then he had time to have it tuned. :lol:

[brownz]

Thats like trying to say you like on of your kids more then the other LOL

[go-fish]

If he had time to get personalized "BAN ONE" license plates, then he had time to have it tuned. :lol:

Fake plates! You don't think Bandit would have used his real plates while purposefully getting the Smokey Bear on his tail, do ya? Also, they could have been the plates off his big rig.

That one was too easy, Derek.

[critter]

Nice Video, Bandit should have tup his t-tops on cuz all the dust was going in side LOL but it wouldnt have beeen as COOL!


Tell me about it. I got to try and clean it up some before having Hal Needham, the director of Smokey and The Bandit, sign the trunk lid for Mark just after this shoot. Mark had to leave town for Hot Rod Power Tour and I volunteered to get it signed for him. That car was pretty trashed, but for a good cause. That's a fun video and had inspired these goofy conversations comparing the cars on forums and blogs all over the internet.

Mark had one goal. He loves movie cars. He wanted to raise everyone's awareness of these little pieces of history, whether they are the original movie cars or not. Look at what this has done .

Excuse me. I have to go work on my KITT clone now.

[mikedc]

OK first of all the Dukes built the 440 in high school shop but never finished the project, then to run 'shine to the government test for alternative fuels they built "The General". It WAS built as a dirt track car because they all used to run dirt tracks,,,before getting caught by Feds, promising to never make 'shine again.
NOW as for The Bandit, it WAS NOT showroom stock, and did not have a 403. The cars had Pontiac 400s and Bandit DID have it built, while a lot of people have things wrong, about both, the 1976 TAs used were Pontiac powered, but were upgraded to TH400s so as to stay together as mid 70s TH350s had major longevity issues.
I talked to a fella who helped set the cars up AT GM, They got 3 TAs, and 2 Bonnevilles. All of the cars were full on TAs with 400s but had HD engines, ala 400s with SD rods and forged pistons,,,all off the shelf, this guy had pictures of the cars, some signed by Burt and Sally as he helped keep them going on the set.
They trashed the first TA in the bridge jump and had to rob parts off of it to keep all of them running. NOW odd ball thing was neither of the cop cars that they got new matched, one was plain jane 350pontiac 2 bbl the other one was a 400 4bbl cop option that was dropped from a truck so it was fixed and sent to theset.
Neat thing, honestly I really feel both cars would be pretty closely matched in actuality.
Brute Pontiac torque of a 400 with good off the shelf heads and Ram Air 3/4 hydraulic cam (the one odd ball hydraulic cam Pontiac had for one year in production) and larger Caddy Qjets! and the TAs had no emissions exhaust, true dual, no cats, and headers.
None of the first movies cars fully survived intact. The last true news was that car 2 and 3 had so many parts mixed they just used the bodt tag when it was gotten rid of.
This is from one of the set mechanics.
As for the General well only one original General ,the one used for close ups actually survived, but had major surgery to fix damage from shows.
And as for the jump cars according to the book I have only about 5 cars were ever driven under power for jumps, the rest were "jump cars" most didnt even have running engines.


Umm . . I don't wish to offend, but your General Lee info is miles away from the mark. About the only accurate thing you said about the GL in there was that it represented a dirt track car.

[BuzzKillian]

I don'y know what you guys are talking about!! I distinctly remember an episode where they put a "Richard Petty Racin' Motor" in it.... Blower and all!!! LOL

[opnwide]

This thread is starting to remind me of the old "Captain Kirk vs Captain Picard" argument...

[Dee T]

I don'y know what you guys are talking about!! I distinctly remember an episode where they put a "Richard Petty Racin' Motor" in it.... Blower and all!!! LOL

Nope that there motor was a Cale Yarbrough Experimental Motor!

[go-fish]

This thread is starting to remind me of the old "Captain Kirk vs Captain Picard" argument...

Easy, Capt. Jean-Luc Picard. BUT when he was named Locutus.

5 extra credit points to anyone who knows what the hell I'm talking about.

[Scott Parkhurst]

The General was acquired by the Duke boys after being used as a getaway car by gold dust thieves.

Don't you guys know anything? You call yourselves car enthusiasts...

http://www.tv.com/the-dukes-of-hazzard/happy-birthday-general-lee/episode/79818/summary.html

..and yes- the modified General Lee would smoke check the emissions-laden bone-stock T/A anywhere except a deep corner (those wider tires and 'radial tuned suspension' might work out) and the T/A probably has better brakes. Power-wise, there's no comparison.

If any of you ever drink with me, ask about my General Lee story. It's a good one.

[Derek69SS]

If any of you ever drink with me, ask about my General Lee story. It's a good one.Noted...

[novaderrik]

I don'y know what you guys are talking about!! I distinctly remember an episode where they put a "Richard Petty Racin' Motor" in it.... Blower and all!!! LOL


Nope that there motor was a Cale Yarbrough Experimental Motor!

it was a Richard Petty racing motor.. it was an early episode, and they bought an old Petty NASCAR racer for like $300.. they showed a shot of the engine, and it was (i think) a big block Chevy with a big shiny blower on it..


This thread is starting to remind me of the old "Captain Kirk vs Captain Picard" argument...

depends- which one's driving the General Lee and which one's in the Bandit?


Easy, Capt. Jean-Luc Picard. BUT when he was named Locutus.

5 extra credit points to anyone who knows what the hell I'm talking about.

the Best of Both Worlds

Resistance is Futile. please bow your heads in remembrance of the fallen heroes of Wolf 359. they wouldn't have been slaughtered if only they'd known to simply ask the Borg to kindly just take a nap.

[JEFFTATE]

Bandit would handle and brake better .
Bandit would be very fast with a 455 cui in it.

General Lee would be very fast with a Hemi .
But , I don't think the General would ever handle as good as Bandit.

[Derek69SS]

The Bandit Trans-Am sure sounded an awful lot like a bigblock Chevy. :hmm:

*fun fact: The Two-Lane Blacktop/American Graffiti '55 Chevy was used to record engine sounds for Smokey and the Bandit.

With an LS7 454 in that Trans-Am, I'd put ALL my money on the T/A.

[Slick68]

OK I don't think we're really gonna find an answer to this, so let me throw something else in here to argue about.

Who got more air? The general or the Fall Guy? :box2:

[mikedc]

Gotta be the General on that one. They jumped that car 200+ feet distance.

The two shows actually had some of the same mechanics & drivers.

[go-fish]

Don't get me started on Colt Seevers. He single handedly saved the day so many times. This world would be a dark dark place w/o him.