The General Lee's Car Alarm

Yes, that is a '69 Dodge Charger, just like the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard.

No, I don't know why there's a pack of German Shepherds on the bonnet.

Presumably, though, they'll discourage car theft. Or those pikeys with squeegies trying to clean your windscreen at the traffic lights.

Knight Rider 2007

After mentioning the hotly anticipated return of The Saint television series, it's worth thinking about another favourite making a comeback - Knight Rider.

I used to love that show when I was a kid - and was incredibly excited in 2003 when I bought myself a bright red, KITT-style Pontiac Trans-Am. I absolutely adored that car - it looked great, drove beautifully and was reliable and practical.

To me, Knight Rider will always be about the eighties-vintage Firebird / Trans Am.


However, much discussion has been undertaken regarding the new 'KITT' in the upcoming television remake of Knight Rider. Internet pundits have even made their own attempts at guessing what the next-generation Knight Industries Two Thousand will look like.













But the KITT's out of the bag now. Knight Rider will return behind the wheel of a fearsome Ford Shelby GT500KR Mustang.

Which is absolutely stupid, as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, don't get me wrong. The Shelby Mustang is a beautiful bit of automobile. It hits all my buttons in terms of that retro look and muscular, aggressive stance. But it's not Knight Rider.

When Glen Larson, the inventor of Knight Rider, was looking to make his 'Lone Ranger with a car' TV series, he chose the 1982 Pontaic Trans Am because it was a breathtakingly exciting new car. Sleek and powerful, it represented the future. The car itself was designed by computer, with breathtaking aerodynamics proven up to a whopping 300mph.

Triumph TR7's and Datsuns aside, there was nothing like the third generation Pontiac Firebird on the roads and it captured the heart of a generation of television viewers in the guise of KITT.

Unlike the Firebird, however, the Shelby Mustang isn't looking to the future. It's looking firmly back at Mustang's epic legacy. The design and execution of this beautiful car takes it's nods from the original Shelby Mustangs of the late 1960's.

It's a retro-styled tribute to days gone by. Knight Rider, by it's very definition, should be automobile's future on today's roads. In ignoring that essential concept, the makers of this new TV show have made an enormous mistake in the car they chose.

Which is a pity, since the car's the co-star of the whole series. Falling at this first hurdle is like trying to remake The Dukes of Hazzard with anything but a '69 Dodge Charger.

Although in their defence, there isn't really a car on the roads today that's comparable to the '82 Pontiac Trans Am. Everything Detroit churns out these days seems to be a 'tribute' - like the watered down Dodge Charger, good looking but unexciting Chrylser 300 or Cheverolet's overpriced re imagining of the first generation Camaro.

American motor manufacturers used to be on the leading edge, driving the industry forward. Now they're constantly trying to recapture their glory days.

Which might explain why the motor industry is swishing around the plughole, loosing a greater and greater market share to foreign motor innovators.

Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning

The 2005 reinvention of The Dukes of Hazzard fared reasonably well at the box office, but failed to set critics and fans alight. Richard Roeper called it 'the worst film of 2005' and Roger Ebert called it a 'lame brained, outdated wheeze.'

I thought it was a lot of fun, but what does my opinion matter? Unlike Ebert and Roeper, I actually have to pay for my cinema tickets.

Modest the profits may have been, but The Dukes of Hazzard did return on Warner Brother's investment, so in order to milk their cash cow further, they put together a Direct-To-DVD prequel called Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning.

With a budget of only $5 million (less than 10% of the original film's budget) it wasn't possible to bring back the movie's original stars, American Pie veteran Seann William Scott or Jackass jackass Johnny Knoxville. Willie Nelson did sign up for another run as Uncle Jesse, but when he's hard pressed for a buck, he'll do anything. (In 1992, he released the album "The IRS Tapes" specifically to settle his money problems with the Inland Revenue Service.)

The result is a pretty great pop-corn movie, with a fairly generic storyline but a great script. Some of the one liners and gags are hilarious - writer Shane Morris should be working for the Scary Movie team - and the car chases, gratuitous nudity and funny scenes with pigs are enough to satisfy most people's craving for Southern Fried silliness.

This time around Bo and Luke Duke are played by relative newcomers Jonathan Bennett and Randy Wayne. Bo is the handsome blond one, who likes to drive way to fast. Luke is the surly womaniser, who likes to 'blow shit up.'

Jonathan Bennett is actually quite good as Bos and has sharp comic timing. Randy Wayne's Luke is pretty much just ballast in the passenger seat of the General Lee.

And instead of Jessica Simpson, who filled her Daisy Dukes very convincingly in the original movie, the role of the Duke's beautiful cousin is played by April Scott. She's a very, very pretty girl, but looks like she weighs about 85lbs when soaking wet and simply doesn't have the curves (or the chutzpah) to pull off the role of the roughest, toughest gal in Georgia.

But the cast does their job. Joel Moore, as mechanic Cooter, deserves a special mention for his crazy antics and one-liners. Second rate comic Harland Williams steals every scene he's in by clutching an adorable puppy under his arm (maybe Randy Wayne should have tried that.) Nineties sex-idol Sherilyn Fenn has a cameo as Boss Hogg's frustrated wife and looks very good doing it. When Randy Wayne rejects her advances, you have to wonder if his version of Luke Duke has gone all Brokeback Mountain on us.

Highlights include assembling the General Lee (this time around, only the driver's side door is welded shut, purely as a plot device to enable the Duke boys to bundle Boss Hogg into the back of their car) and a scene with the Boss' prize pig balancing on a rooftop. Low spots involve every scene in which Randy Wayne opens his mouth and the final amazing 'jump' by the General Lee, which is very clearly computer edited.

Back in my day, they used to make the crazy jumps like that for real.

Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning is available from Blockbuster and most DVD shops.

Little Known Fact...

I've always been one for naming my cars. My first car, a beautiful red Triumph TR7, I called 'Tiffany.'

My other big, red car - a Pontiac Firebird - was called Tiffany II. Hardly original.


Actually, there's a long and sordid history behind naming cars. One of the first was Traveler [sic], a '58 Chrylser 300D which was used by real-life Moonshine runner Jerry Rushing, whose exploits later inspired The Dukes of Hazzard and Smokey and the Bandit.


The real Traveller (Rushing misspelled his car's name) was actually General Lee's horse during the American Civil War. This beast was apparently one of the fastest horses in the world - and General Lee was buried next to his beloved mount when he was laid to rest.

Traveler was a worthy name indeed, then, for a mighty steel steed that could get up to 140mph with a trunk full of shine!

Jerry Rushing's biography inspired the 1974 movie Moonrunners and the hit TV classic The Dukes of Hazzard, both of which shared several characters and plot devices. Instead of Traveler, however, the Duke boys drove in a souped-up '69 Dodge Charger called the General Lee.


A car nearly as famous as The General was the '77 Pontiac Trans Am driven by Burt Reynolds in the awesome movie Smokey and the Bandit. Not many people know that this brutal muscle car was actually christened 'Trigger' in the second movie, after Roy Roger's trusted steed.


In the 1980 sequel, therefore, co-star Jerry Reed christens the replacement Trans Am 'Son of Trigger' although while evading Sheriff Justice's 'howd purswud' Burt Reynolds pats the dashboard and murmers the original name: "Come on, Trigger."


And the third Bandit car? Well, there's no Burt Reynolds this time around, but Jerry Reed (disguised as The Bandit) does refer to it as the "Banditmobile."


Not quite as catchy, is it?

One thing's for sure. Old cars have a lot more character than the generic boxes churned out in Japan and Korea. Giving an old muscle car or a vintage sportster a name seems to make sense. Call a Hyundai anything other than 'a car' and it seems somewhat unseamly.