Answer: The Dukes of Hazzard

If you were a fan of the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard (1979-1985), we’d absolutely forgive you for assuming that they recycled a lot of footage. The show featured car chases, stunts, and crashes in every one of the 147 episodes.

It would be easy to assume that there was no way they actually smashed up all those cars. Surely they recycled some (or even all) of the numerous car jumps and crashes, right? In reality, the production crew of The Dukes of Hazzard really did burn through cars at the rate it would appear. Not even counting the background cars smashed up during production, but just the iconic bright orange Dodge Charger, they destroyed in excess of 300 of them during the filming of the show.

It wasn’t until the very end of the show, when it got increasingly difficult to source more 1969 (and modified 1968) Chargers to smash up and too expensive to produce kit models in-house, that the producers began quietly recycling old footage to keep costs under control as well as using clever angles with scale model cars to create the illusion that a much larger full-scale car was performing the stunt.