Other Vehicles of Hazzard

[HossC]

I've given all the best known vehicles their own threads, so I thought I'd start one for some of the miscellaneous vehicles. I can't promise they'll all be multiple views because they take ages.

I'll kick it off with Petey Willis's 1968 Chevy Chevelle Malibu from 'Welcome Back, Bo 'n' Luke'. The hood comes complete with a Corvette L88 scoop. The sponsor stickers all seem to be for fictional companies, and reappear on race cars in other episodes.

I've noticed that in many episodes there were two or more similar vehicles playing the part of one. There are two distinct "ice cream" trucks in 'Swamp Molly' and in this episode there were at least two Chevelles. For the majority of the scenes they used the one in the lower picture below, but the top one was used as they drive away. The differences I spotted are the sticker placement on the front fender, the thickness of the "55" on the door and the flared wheel arches. The wheel arch modification seems quite rare; I only found one or two pictures of similar cars when I was searching for reference photos. It also seems odd that they spent all that time on matching paint jobs and then messed up with the stickers.

[HossC]

Of course Petey Willis needs a support vehicle, so here's his pickup truck. I used Uncle Jesse's truck as the basis for this one, but over 90% of it had to be recolored or modified in some way. I have to admit, it didn't look right until I added the larger wheels. In addition to the new wheels it also gets a front nudge bar, larger mirrors and a chrome roll bar. Note that the "Petey Willis" script is similar to the one on the car, but not quite the same (that would make things too easy!).

I'm not sure if two separate trucks were used here, or if they just changed the rear bumper. I modeled the one on the left (because it's the same as Uncle Jesse's), but the truck also appeared with a thinner bumper complete with (unreadable) license plate.

[Jake01]

Nice, I like that pickup with that paintjob.

[RogerDuke]

Great stuff Hoss!

Thanks for sharing it.

[HossC]

Here's a pair of 1973 Ford Torinos from 'Carnival of Thrills'. I've only done side views because a) there's not much to see in other views, and they're so much quicker . The top one is the 'Leap for Life' car. This was the first car to have an unfortunate accident when it was being driven by Bob Dexter. The bottom one is one of the standard 'Carnival of Thrills' stunt cars. Various cars were used for the stunts, but seeing as one of them was a Torino, that's the one I decided to do.

This screengrab shows the small part of the flame graphics that make it onto the hood of the 'Leap for Life' car. There's another 'Leap for Life' Torino just visible on the far right of the picture. I find it strange that these cars still have all their glass and trim considering they're going to be jumped.

[HossC]

This is my version of MB Carver's race car from the season 6 two-parter 'Undercover Dukes'. It appears to be a 1984 Olds Cutlass with a different grille and a paint scheme designed to bear a passing resemblance to Terry Labonte's 1983 NASCAR Buick Regal. Terry Labonte made an uncredited appearance as part of the pit crew in 'Undercover Dukes'. Terry's car was sponsored by Budweiser, so the hood graphics have the MB Carver name in a Budweiser-like shape. The small stickers are the same fake companies used on Petey Willis's car (see above), although the colors of some have been changed. I did consider doing an overhead view, but couldn't find enough decent reference pictures to work from. The decals you would've seen are: Budweiser-like MB Carver logo on hood; "44" on the roof in blue with a red/white outline; script saying "Bo Duke" over the door. I'll come to the trunk decal below.

Here's Terry Labonte's racecar from 1983 for comparison.

This is where I need some help. I thought the text on the trunk would say something, but when I rotated and distorted it (see inset) all I could make out was "BEANUEFERIES". Am I missing something here, or did they just stick on some random letters to take the place of the Budweiser decal? I tried running it through an anagram program to see if they could've made anything better, but without luck; that was until I tried changing it to French. A short way down the list was the term "Beauf Inseree". Google Translate gives its meaning as "redneck inserted" - part of the NASCAR pre-race checklist I guess .

[RogerDuke]

Nice work as always Hoss!

Beanueferies? Great detective work!

[HossC]

After doing the Petey Willis car to start this thread, it seemed silly not to do Cooter's car from 'Duke vs Duke'. They're both 1968 Chevelles and share a number of other similarities. Their hoods both have the Corvette L88 scoop, although it's smoothed in and painted the same color as the body on Cooter's car. They also both have the same wheels and vents on hood. They do differ though; Cooter's car doesn't have painted headlights and the roll cages look different. I haven't bothered with a top view because there isn't anything to see.

Just like with Petey Willis's car, at least two different Chevelles were used. Most of the time they used a standard model (below left), but for several of the close-ups they used one with flared wheel arches (below right). The one with the flared wheel arches has full-height seats, whereas the standard one doesn't. The spacing of the stripes and placement of the number varied from car to car and from one side to the other. Due to its rarity, I wouldn't be surprised if the car with the flared wheel arches was repainted for 'Welcome Back, Bo 'n' Luke'. I don't know how many standard cars there were, but one of them gets a pretty good hit from Rosco's car at the end of the race, so it's probably less likely that that one was reused.

[Jake01]

I like that car, now I found it was reused on Season 4 Miss Tri Counties, pretty much the same only difference was the plate was changed to TMN 435.

[HossC]

I suppose I could have posted this in the Rosco's Patrol Car thread since it's a Plymouth Fury driven by Enos, but there's no lightbar or police decals, so I'm posting it here. This is Enos's race car from 'Luke's Love Story'. It meets its fate when Turk, who everyone thinks is Cooter, barges him off the road.

[Jake01]

Love that nice paintjob, btw, since they took one of the patrol cars in the show, the plate it had was 25689.

[HossC]

A few weeks ago I got asked a question about the vans that appeared in Dukes. I think the only one I've done so far is Cooter's van from 'Uncle Boss'. To put that right, here's the 'Apex Rent-a-truck' Ford Econoline van from 'Coy Meets Girl'. It's listed as a 1975 on imcdb.org, although I'm not sure how you tell the 1975-78 models apart. The Apex vans appear to have nudge bars like wider versions of the one found on the General.

They must have used at least three different trucks, and the decals were different on each one. Look at the grabs below and you'll see that there's no consistency about the location of side logos and "rent-a-truck" text, the side stripes change color or go missing, and the rear "rent-a-truck" text changes size! In my version (above) I decided to go with the most common appearance, which is the way I would've done the real vans.

[RogerDuke]

Nice job on the rent a truck Hoss.

Vance's profile reminds me a little of Rambo in that screengrab.

[HossC]

Now that I have an Econoline outline I've decided to add Rhuebottom's van. Despite Rhuebottom's store being a regular in Hazzard Square throughout most of the series, I think the van only showed up in 'Pin the Tail on the Dukes'. The rectangular headlights and covered gas cap mark this out as a later model than the Apex vans. There are a couple of screengrabs of the van in the bloopers thread.

[Jake01]

The model was a 79 model, that was the mostly used van model ever used in the show, not alot of General Motors and Dodge vans were used in the show.

[RogerDuke]

not alot of General Motors and Dodge vans were used in the show.

That's interesting. I never paid attention enough to notice that. You learn something every day.

[HossC]

There were certainly a few more Ford vans than other makes, but Madame Delilah's van in 'The Fortune Tellers' (below) was a Dodge Tradesman, as was Hughie Hogg's RV in 'Hughie Hogg Strikes Again', and the Baxley Sisters drove a Chevy. There were also plenty of Chevy/GMC pickups and larger trucks, including several driven by Cooter.

The Swift Step Van (below) made several appearances in early seasons:

[Mark B / Scooter Davenport]

Thanks for the van art Hoss! Spectacular as always.

I love the 'almost real' look of the apex van. I used to do that kind of graphic work for TV shows, so I can sympathise with whoever was trying t keep the decals consistant on the vans. They probably had minutes to get it thrown on the vans and knew that nobody would ever notice the lettering moving around from scene to scene (until HossC 30 years later). I made a few boo-boos in my time that ended up on national TV- fortunatley most of if isn't on DVD yet!

I'm going to build a 1/25 Rhuebottoms van soon!

M

[HossC]

I was watching 'Days of Shine and Roses' recently when I decided to do Boss and Jesse's cars from the moonshine race.

It's not clear what happened to 'Sweet Tillie', Uncle Jesse's 1971 Ford Custom 500 from 'High Octane', but in this episode he gets a 1967 Mustang from Cooter. I already had artwork for a fastback Mustang, so I only had to modify the roof and rear end, and add the side vents. It looks pretty stock apart from nearly every part being painted matt black. The hubcaps initially had me stumped, and I looked through all sorts of Ford wheels before I discovered that they come from a 1968 Pontiac Tempest!

Just to confirm the new name, here's the closed captions from the scene where Jesse names the car 'Black Tillie II'.

Jesse's opponent, Boss Hogg, drives a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro. This one just needed a reworking of the front and rear ends to change the 1967 Camaro that I already had. Just like Black Tillie II, nearly every part got spray-painted, this time gray.

I've included a screengrab with the car's name because I was surprised to see it uses the British (correct!) spelling of "Grey". MaryAnne kindly confirmed that the Region 1 (US) DVDs have the same spelling for 'Grey Ghost, Jr.'.

Like many of the other single-episode vehicles, it looks like there was more than one of each of these cars, although the differences are more noticeable on the Camaro (especially at the rear). A few episodes later, 'Hazzard Connection' also has a roughly painted Mustang and Camaro (the car used to scare Enos and one belonging to the bad guys respectively) - it's possible that these were the same cars repainted.