What You Never Knew About TV's Most Iconic Cars

Surely you'd recognize the cars on this list, but you probably have no idea what it took to get them into character, keep them running or what happened to them after filming, Here are the five most iconic cars on television and a few fun facts that will surely surprise you.

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The Dukes of Hazard 1969 Dodge Charger known as The General Lee was known for its crazy stunts and went airborne more than 150 during the span of the series! Even though sand or concrete was in the car during the jumps to prevent flipping, the cars still rarely survived the jumps and at least 300 different cars starred as the general lee. Mechanics were constantly on the set of the series to salvage and prepare what they could for filming. Some of the General Lees were actually 1968 models fixed to look like 1969. At least 75 chargers were sent to the junk yard. In 2001, two collectors found a General Lee in a Georgia junkyard. The car ended up being the original, from the first episode. The car was restored and sold for $110,000. The was so famous back in the day that at one time it received an average of 35,000 fan letters per month and countless replicas have been created since.

The red 1957 Plymouth Fury has become one of the most ominous vehicles since the 1983 production of the horror classic Christine. With a detailed description of the car throughout the novel written by Steven King, he said he chose the Fury to be Christine because it was “an oddball muscle car that had a cool, but evil look. 24 cars were purchased for the production of the film and many alterations had to be made to them. Only 2 cars survived intact and were sold after the production of the film. To get some of the scenes, one of the Furys had to be demolished using hydraulic pumps and another had a rubber front installed for some of the scenes of the Christine’s attacks. The fury used for most of the driving scenes had a button starter installed and the car noises actually used in the film were not of any of the Furys, but actually from a 1970 428 SCJ owned by the actor who played Buddy Repperton.

Co-starring David Hasselhoff in the series Knight Rider was K.I.T.T, the 1982 Customized Pontiac Transam, which stood for Knight Industries Two Thousand. The show typically ruined four to nine K.I.T.T. cars each season, but luckily GM sold the trans ams to the producers for $1 each, though even with the hefty discount, each one cost about $18,000 to modify into K.I.T.T. With four original cars still intact to date, one of them was recently purchased for $150,000 and restored by a California resident. While the car is not street legal, many of the features seen on the show still function in the car. For the remake, a 2009 Ford Shelby GT500KR was the car chosen to play K.I.T.T. Though before the production of the first series, initially K.I.T.T. was to be named tat T.A.T.T. for Trans Am Two Thousand because the design was based on the Pontiac Trans Am.

The DeLorean DMC-12 was the model used to portray the DoLorean time machine in the series Back to the Future starring Michael J. Fox .The Delorean was chosen because of its sliding doors and spacey look. But the original design of the car was considered too smooth by producers and many modifications had to be made to give it a more modest look. The speedometer also had to be replaced because of a law mandating that American models of the DMC-12 had speedometers only up to 85 miles per hour. The doors of the DoLorean would fail when cold and the crew had to use hairdryers to warm them between takes. Another goof during the production of Back to the Future II was when three of the cables holding up the DoLorean snapped and it almost fell on Michael J. Fox. After the movie, the car model became very popular and sought after, even though the company stopped producing the car 3 years before. John DeLorean even wrote a letter to Bob Gale, thanking him for using the car in the film. After sitting outside of Universal Studios for years, recently the studio fully restored the car and it is now on display.

The most expensive cars of their time, the black 1975 Daytona Spider and later the white Testarossa were what gave the series Miami Vice its popularity in the 80s. The testarossa seen in the show was introduced because Enzo Ferrarri was outraged by the producers initially using a corvette to portray the daytona spider. Though due to the extreme high cost of ferraris in 1986 during the shows production, many mock-up vehicles still had to be created using DeTamaso Panteras and testarossa body kits.