Ben Jones, better known as “Congressman Cooter” from his days representing Georgia in Congress — or just plain “Cooter” from his role on “The Dukes of Hazzard” — thinks Bubba Watson is one lucky guy. Not because Watson won the Masters over the weekend, but because the man got such a good deal on the General Lee car he picked up at auction in January.
Watson’s car, known as the General One, is one of 300 1969 Dodge Chargers featured on “Hazzard,” and one of only 20 to survive. “It was the first car we destroyed,” says Jones, who says on average two cars were obliterated per episode. “That one was the first one that we jumped.” The General One was rescued a few years ago from a junkyard in Georgia after a fan of the show recognized it. “Rusted out, totally picked over,” Jones calls the car. He wasn’t too impressed with the restoration job on the General One, but still feels that Watson got a steal at $110,000.
“I think he got it very low,” he said. Another General Lee had recently been valued at three times that.
Jones, who runs two Dukes of Hazzard shops and museums in Tennessee and pens political essays in his free time, is pleased that a fellow Georgian holds the keys to the General One. “He is a good old boy who was self-taught,” he says. Plus, “anyone named Bubba’s all right with us. Just about every southern family’s got a brother named Bubba. I do.”
