What can be considered a crucial model in automotive history is going to be up for grabs soon at a Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale, Arizona. We are talking about the very first General Lee of the world-famous The Dukes of Hazzard TV series, that aired between 1979 and 1985. And - mind you - we are not talking about one of the over 300 Dodge Chargers that got thrashed during the filming of the series, those were all replicas of this one, the original, the first General Lee to ever grace the TV screen on the pilot episode, the one that can be seen jumping Roscoe’s Dodge Monaco police cruiser at the beginning of each episode (pictured above, see the video after the jump): this is the real deal.

Also known as “Lee 1″, this 1969 Dodge Charger quite understandably did not last that long in the showbiz as it surely was not designed for the stunts and jumps that the script required in the first place, and after a few appearances as background car in a few scenes, in 1978 it was sent to rot in a junkyard in Georgia until 2001, when it was retrieved and purchased by Mr. Travis Bell and eventually sold to The Dukes Of Hazzard enthusiast Marvin Murphy, who worked on the restoration of the model to its pre-jump conditions together with Mr.Bell himself. The whole process was covered by website Inside Line - which was also the first to report the news about the auction - and the resurrected model was finally completed in 2006.

The restored “Lee 1″ is powered by a Dodge 383 hp V8 engine (hence not an Hemi unit), has recently been on display at the DuPont Registry’s museum in Florida and will be sold in an open auction with no reserve. Less significant models used in the filming has been sold in the past for 450,000 $, therefore the grandfather of all the General Lee replicas that followed is expected to fetch more than that. All in all, this is one of the most famous cars in the world and arguably the real star of one of the most celebrated TV-series of all time (well, either that or Daisy Duke’s shorts). After the jump there is also a trailer of the short documentary posted by Inside Line a few years back about how the ‘Lee 1′ came back to life after its 23 years long hiatus in Georgia, check them out.

via | Inside Line

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