The General Lee Trying Drifting – Dodge Charger R/T Drift & SOUND!!

An orange Dodge Charger R/T dressed in unmistakable General Lee livery does something the Dukes of Hazzard rarely showed on screen — sliding sideways through a corner instead of flying over a jump. Shot on a brand-new camcorder as the creator’s first upload, the clip pairs a genuine R/T’s engine note with real driver involvement. Watch a TV icon prove it’s more than just a stunt car.

Most cars built to look like the General Lee spend their lives doing exactly one thing — jumping, or at least posing like they’re about to. This orange Dodge Charger R/T, dressed in the unmistakable livery of the Duke boys’ TV icon, has other plans. Instead of a straight-line stunt, it’s sliding sideways through corners, and the sound alone is enough to explain why a first-time video from a brand-new camcorder ended up worth sharing. What starts as a tribute car quickly turns into something closer to a statement about what these cars are actually capable of.

A Tribute Built on a Real Charger R/T

Underneath the orange paint, the roof graphic, and the “01” door number lies a genuine Dodge Charger R/T, the same performance trim that made the original Charger a legitimate muscle car rather than just a TV prop. Building a General Lee tribute on an actual R/T, rather than a base Charger, means the car backing up that iconic livery has real performance credentials to match its screen-famous inspiration, instead of just borrowing the look without the substance underneath.

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Choosing to Drift Instead of Jump

The Dukes of Hazzard made the General Lee famous for one specific stunt — flying over obstacles, landing hard, and somehow driving away every time. This video deliberately does something the show almost never showed: a General Lee tribute actually working through a corner sideways, engine and tires doing the talking instead of a ramp and a stunt crew. It reframes a car most people only associate with jumps as a genuinely capable performance machine in its own right.

A First Video, and It Shows in the Best Way

The creator notes this is the first video shot with a new camcorder, a Canon Legria HF M46, a detail that matters because it frames the footage as a genuine hobbyist capturing a car he found compelling enough to test new gear on, rather than a produced piece from an established automotive channel. That amateur, enthusiast-first framing is part of what gives the clip its authenticity, and it’s a reminder that some of the most memorable car footage online comes from someone who just happened to be pointing a camera at the right moment.

Why Viewers Prefer This to a Straight-Line Pass

The comment section draws a clear line between this kind of driving and typical muscle car content built around quarter-mile passes. Viewers specifically called out that watching a car actually driven — worked through a turn, requiring real driver involvement — delivers more genuine excitement than a straight run down a drag strip, while making clear that’s not a knock on drag racing itself, just a different kind of thrill that comes from a driver actually working the chassis rather than just the throttle.

The General Lee’s Outsized Cultural Footprint

Few TV cars have generated as many real-world tribute builds as the General Lee, and that’s a testament to how thoroughly The Dukes of Hazzard cemented the Charger’s orange livery into pop culture well beyond the show’s original run. Decades after the series ended, enthusiasts are still building, painting, and — as this video proves — actually driving hard cars finished in that exact scheme, keeping a piece of 1980s television alive on public roads and back lots.

The Sound That Sells the Clip

Beyond the visual of a Charger R/T sliding through a corner in General Lee livery, the video’s title puts equal weight on the sound, and for good reason — a period-correct R/T engine note under load, especially during a slide where throttle input is constantly changing, is a different experience than the same engine at a steady cruise. It’s the kind of detail that separates footage worth sharing from footage that’s just documentation of a car sitting still.

A Small Clip With a Big Following

For a first-time upload shot on brand-new equipment, this clip taps into something bigger than its own modest production — decades of Dukes of Hazzard nostalgia, genuine appreciation for a well-built Charger R/T, and a clear preference among enthusiasts for cars that get driven hard rather than trailered to a show and parked behind a velvet rope.

Built to Slide, Not Just to Jump

There’s also a real engineering distinction between a car set up to jump and a car set up to drift, one that this tribute build seems to understand better than most. A General Lee replica built purely for stunt jumps typically needs reinforced suspension geometry and a stiffened chassis to survive repeated hard landings, priorities that can work against the kind of progressive, controllable slide this video captures. Getting a Charger R/T to rotate smoothly through a corner instead of just surviving a jump requires a completely different balance of suspension setup, tire choice, and driver technique — which suggests whoever built and drove this particular General Lee tribute prioritized handling and control over pure spectacle, a choice that shows in how composed the car looks mid-slide rather than fighting the driver for control.

Standing Out in a Crowded Field of Tribute Cars

That distinction also explains why footage like this circulates so well among enthusiasts who’d otherwise scroll past another General Lee jump clip. The internet is saturated with tribute Chargers recreating the same handful of stunts from the original show, and most of that content looks identical from one upload to the next. A General Lee tribute actually being driven with skill on a real road or lot, rather than staged for a single scripted jump, stands out precisely because it’s doing something the source material never did — proving the car underneath the costume can genuinely perform. In a genre this crowded, being the one clip that actually earns a second watch is its own kind of achievement. Most General Lee tributes never get that far. That gap is exactly why this footage keeps getting passed around years after it was uploaded, still on that first camcorder. Good footage rarely needs a second take.

Watch the full video and drop your thoughts in the comments below.

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8 Comments

  1. I bent a pair of traction bars doing that once

  2. 1. Wasn’t set up to drift
    2. Drifting is gay
    3. Spinning ain’t winning.

  3. It’s all understreer as all Mopars will do if kept it at 15 degrees positive it would produce a fast track

  4. But it drifted all the time in the show….

  5. Awesome

  6. It’s not drifting…..its POWER SLIDING

  7. They drifted the General on dirt back when the show was running, and a few times on asphalt

  8. Pim Rottier, het kan

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