I’m from the American Southeast. I’m American by birth, Southern by grace of hashem. Sure, I was born around New York to Jewish parents from the Bronx (and for one of them, Havana before the Bronx), but I moved to North Carolina when I was two, and, aside from a nearly 20-year stint in Los Angeles that I very much enjoyed, I’ve lived my life in the South. That’s why I feel like I’m qualified to make judgments about pop culture and media that are set in the South, like the infamous Dukes of Hazzard.
There was a certain kind of cartoonified idea of the South that became especially popular in American culture in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and The Dukes of Hazzard is probably the best-known example of this. It’s a ridiculous show about the Duke Boys getting into jams and scrapes and hijinx that ends up with them having to jump their Confederate Battle flag-emblazoned ’69 Charger over mud pits and ravines as Daisy Duke wears Daisy Dukes and corrupt local police chew the scenery.
The cars, of course, are the grits that hold the whole show together, and, as you may expect, they’re almost all American Iron, with a smattering of the expected Volkswagens and an occasional Honda. You can look at the IMCDB page for the show and see what I mean.
But there’s one weird outlier, and it shows up in the opening credits of every episode. Look:
See the car that gets its tires shot with arrows loosed by Bo and Luke? It’s a pretty tight close-up, so it’s hard to see exactly what that car is, I know. I mean, it’s just a wheel. But it is a distinctive wheel.
Luckily, what seems to be the same car shows up in at least one other episode:
It’s a Peugeot 504! A 1972 one, it seems. An icon of French motoring, and while these were imported to the United States from 1968 to 1991, they were never really all that popular, despite being excellent, rugged cars. When they did sell, they tended to sell in the more urban areas, where people were a little more open to driving something weird and so unashamedly foreign.
The Dukes of Hazzard takes place in the fictional Hazzard County, Georgia, home to the equally-fictional Civil War Battle of Hazzard County. I went to college in Atlanta for a couple years, and spent a lot of time driving around rural Georgia, along with many years of traveling around all sorts of North Carolina counties and other lovely, humid Southern backwaters. I can tell you for a fact that there were not many Peugeots around.
Sure, where I grew up in Greensboro, we had a handful of Peugeots buzzing Gallically around, but as you got further and further from the city, you were a hell of a lot less likely to see anything like this. Which brings me to my question: who the hell had the Peugeot in Hazzard County?
Now, I have a sort of theory: in many hick counties I’ve driven through, I’ve found plenty of junkyards. And those junkyards almost always have one solitary weird car. I just drove out to Kinston, NC, for example, and on the way saw an Autobianchi at a scrapyard, propped up high on a sign. I’ve found a lone Renault Dauphine in a field behind a barn, too. There are some weirdos out there.
So, maybe this 504 is Hazzard County’s lone weirdo? I’d like to think it’s driven by a French-Canadian academe who is undertaking a large-scale cultural anthropology project about the American South, and they’ve embedded themselves in Hazzard County, driving around in their Peugeot, taking notes, watching, scrutinizing.
Is that why the Duke Boys are shooting arrows into its tires? They don’t appreciate being subjects of a study? Did they read an early draft and feel they were being condescended to? Or did they feel the work wasn’t properly footnoted, and they’re shooting an arrow for every missed citation?
I wish I knew. This Peugeot makes as much sense in Hazzard County as a rabbi at a pig pickin’. If I were this hypothetical Hazzard County Peugeot owner, I’d at least consider painting a cocarde tricolore on the roof and naming the car the Général du Gaulle.
Then I’d jump over a huge ravine to elude Gendarme Coltrane and Chef Porc.
That 504 was driven by northern college student Freedom Riders. Cooter found it abandoned out near Hazzard Dam and towed it in. The college students were never seen or heard from again.
“ This Peugeot makes as much sense in Hazzard County as a rabbi at a pig pickin’. “
And if you ever wanted to see what that might look like, have a look at this link:
https://opposite-lock.com/topic/131031/a-rabbi-at-a-pick-pickin
That clearly can’t be Torch’s rabbi, though. Those ribs are too red with a tomato-based sauce to be Carolina BBQ.
As a public service for the uninitiated, I’ll just leave this right here. It’s a complete education in 3 minutes and 26 seconds.
https://youtu.be/6ubTQfr_tyY?si=Wn-xyiFqtXXAYdd2
North Carolina or South Carolina? In the South it was more Mustard and Vinegar. Up North they go for Tomato and sweet. Best BBQ is Santa Maria Tri Tip.
What’s this crazy talk? The best Carolina BBQ is Eastern NC BBQ, just vinegar and pepper.
Gentlemen, to your corners.
I was born in Georgia and raised in Alabama, I am a lifelong connoisseur of all forms of slow cooked smoked meats, and I have consumed every regional variation – North Carolina vinegar sauce, South Carolina mustard sauce, Alabama white sauce, Memphis dry rub, Kansas City tomato sauce, Texas brisket, you name it – in the regions that birthed them from coast to coast. And as far as one being better than the other, you know what conclusion I’ve come to?
All barbecue matters.
If you love barbecue, you are my people. And I hate to see my people fight amongst themselves.
Can’t answer any of your questions, just want to say I owned one not so long ago and loved it! 😀
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bl-X3-FBbVM
Wait, there’s a car in this scene?
came here to type the same! Catherine Bach held a special place for us children of the 80s. I mean, she even drove a Jeep Golden Eagle!
Well… there is certainly a great pair of headlights in this scene.
Maybe that was the first French car the owner had purchased, and soon realized that going down the foreign car habit rabbit hole was non bon. Get one, you just want more from other countries and that way lies ruin.
Yep, that person may have been the first to recognize that 504 = bad gateway.
He had to buy it after a drunken night in the Bayou, when he couldn’t find his truck, 404 not found.
“404 not found.”
I seen whut you done rat thar.
That’s 502 though 🙁
I spent some time living in a deeply rural part of Michigan. Which is admittedly different in many ways from the rural South. However, Michiganders, being from where cars were made, might have been even more disinclined to buy foreign cars than Southerners were.
Yet you could drive down any rural road and see a derelict and oddball foreign car sitting in a field or peeking out from behind the barn. Peugeot, FIAT, Renault… all manner of stuff that would make you say, “Who bought that HERE??”
“a handful of Peugeots buzzing Gallically around”
My first read was ‘galactically’, but that made no sense.
My second thought was ‘glacially’, because I have at least once (and maybe twice) been stuck behind an old 504 diesel…IYKYK
Upon realizing you were referring to a synonym for French, I chose to revert to my second take.
Huh, I didn’t know that Peugeot sold 504s here before 5 MPH bumpers. All the ones I’ve seen here have the big rubber diving board bumpers.
I still can’t believe that NYC used 504s and 505s briefly as taxi cabs.
“I still can’t believe that NYC used 504s and 505s briefly as taxi cabs.”
I don’t see why not. They were used as taxis in many other places in the world. And apparently in diesel form, they were very reliable and durable.
And given the traffic in NYC, it’s not like you need the power of a V8.
They didn’t sell 504s until 1991, though. Once the 505 was ready they went to those (there may have been a year or two of 505 sedans and 504 wagons).
The last year for 504 sedans in the US was 1979 when the 505 sedan debuted for 1980. The wagon lasted until 1983, the 505 wagon coming out in 1984. I’ve owned a ’79 504 sedan, two ’83 wagons, and an ’84 505 TD wagon. And an ’85 505TD sedan and a ’92 505 SW8 with the 2.2L gas motor and a stick.
Globally, Nigeria kept them in production until *2005*! Crazy! They were also built in Iran, Kenya, Argentina, and China.
They definitely sold them in pre-impact bumper form in the US, just most of them have long since returned to the Earth, as while no 504 was particularly rust resistant, the early ones actively sought the stuff out. My sedan was a lovely, completely rust-free car from Palm Springs, CA though:
https://flic.kr/p/pbJLGs
Cool thing about that car – it only had 70K on it when I bought it in 1998, and the original owner had fitted a giant 25+ gallon aux fuel tank in the trunk when the car was brand new, AND it had a little log book with every fillup recorded from new off the dealer’s lot. Not many entries with nearly 45 gallons of diesel tankage. I ditched the tank as I had no use for it and it took up half the trunk. He regularly did 1500 miles between fillups!
And my last of the line ’92 wagon at a meet at the French Embassy in DC:
https://flic.kr/p/pbKiH3
Wish I still had both.
I wonder if that was the same car a friend drove around San Diego. They would go down to Tiajuana and fill the tank with 10-cent diesel.
That actually makes sense! He recorded date and gallons, but not price or location. That is a RARE color on 504s, so if it was the same, could well be the car.
That 505 break was something else.
They were fantastic cars. I had an ’84 Turbodiesel 5-seater 505 before the ’92. The Silver Slug. Definitely no rocket with the 2.3L TD and a 3spd autotragic. Wish that one had been a stick too. And I wish the ’92 had been a 5-seater.
What made you such an ardent Peugeoter?
I was poor but liked nice cars. A Peugeot was by FAR the nicest car you could buy for the dollar (and they are genuinely delightful cars to drive). As a concrete example, that ’92 505 SW8 with 90K miles on it was $3500 at only six years old. A similar age/condition Volvo 245/745 was $10K+ at the time, and nothing like as good to drive. No harder to DIY fix, once you learned to swear in French. 🙂 But in that early Internet age, parts got harder and harder to come by, and as my career progressed and I became less broke, I gave up on them as daily drivers and got into BMWs and Saabs, then lost my job and had to sell my beautiful 504 sedan that was a summer toy too.
A bittersweet story. Good memories, though, I bet!
Yes indeed. And the Peugeot Club was the first automobile club I got involved with in person. Great memories there too. An eclectic bunch. That trip to DC for the meet at the French Embassy was the last big trip I took with my grandfather. Took him to the Smithsonian, where they had an example of the airplane he flew in WWII. That was really special. Did a work stop on the way home, so he got to see what I did for a living for a couple days.
Lots of memories considering it wasn’t actually THAT long of a timespan. Only 6-7 years in total. I bought and sold so many cars back then!
The mighty “algorithm” showed me this today and it made me think of you.
I just found this on AliExpress:
C$17.18 | DCT 1:64 505 Sedan Alloy Model Car
https://a.aliexpress.com/_ms585aD
Neat! Thanks for sharing that. I have a really nice 1:18th scale 504 that I got at the Schlumpf Museum in France, and a 1:18 405 Coupe in my collection, but no 505s.
To your point about southern towns having one weird car, I remember driving through a very rural part of Virginia once years ago and seeing a Renault LeCar sticking up over the fence of a junkyard, perched on the top of a stack of car-casses. Also, when I was in college in Virginia in the early ’00s, the school’s fleet of vans included a couple of ’91 Chevy Sportvans that had dealer badges on the back from a Chevrolet-Peugeot dealer—there’s a weird combo.
In the opening credits of most early episodes of Murder, She Wrote, there’s a shot of Jessica Fletcher riding her bike down a Cabot Cove (/Mendocino) street past a number of parked cars, mostly anonymous ’80s boxes; there’s a longer version of the shot in the pilot movie, and the last parked car she passes at the end of that longer version is a 1971 BMW Bavaria, or possibly an earlier 2500/2800. Feels like a car that would have been exotic enough in Mendocino in the mid-’80s, and probably pretty unheard of in Maine!
BMWs, including Bavarias, would not have been completely alien in Bar Harbour.
Jackie Onassis owned a green 1974 3.0S given to her by Ari. She sold it to a neighbor 18 years later in favor of a green 1992 325i sedan.
While she didn’t spend time in Maine – she’s the type of person who would have if her family had history/vacation property there the way the Roosevelts did.
They weren’t uncommon cars anywhere on the southern half of the coast of Maine or at the ski mountains in Western Maine back then. Perfectly normal part of my childhood. European cars absolutely everywhere, all the time.
European cars were absolutely the norm in coastal Maine back then. Everywhere, all over the place. In fact, Maine had THREE Peugeot dealers, almost certainly the largest concentration of them per capita in the whole USA. Saabs and Volvos galore, no shortage of BMWs and Mercedes. And of course, TONS of VWs. Even lots of Renaults. The coast of Maine has a LOT of wealthy old-money types and professionals who loved them. The standard student car at my ’80s high school in a rich suburb of Portland was the hand-me-down Volvo wagon. The greater Portland area is actually quite wealthy in general, then and now.
The local Peugeot dealer to me in Falmouth (just outside Portland) was actually a Cadillac-Oldsmobile-Peugeot-Fiat-*Rolls-Royce* dealership in the early ’80s. The next one up the coast was a Peugeot/Subaru dealer in Woolwich (still a Subaru dealer, and remained an official Peugeot dealer many years after they quit selling cars in the US), then WAAAY up the coast was a standalone Peugeot dealer in Blue Hill of all places. The Mercedes dealer was right down the street in Falmouth, and also sold Subarus until Subaru took off and they built a stand-alone Subaru store (that turned into a BMW store, then a Saab store as each outgrew the location). There eventually was a Chevy-Saab-Alfa Romeo dealer in Portland. Which is again a Chevy-Fiat-Alfa dealer today with a Fiat-Alfa “studio” in their back 40 parking lot. VW/Porsche/Audi was in Falmouth too and is still there to this day in the same location, though greatly expanded and also sells Mazda. The rest have all moved to other parts of Greater Portland. No Rolls-Royce dealer any more though. And oddly enough, to this day there is no MINI dealer in Maine, though for a while there was an indie where you could get factory service and warranty work done in Freeport.
Wasn’t there a Citroen importer up there for the longest time too?
Probably, but that would have been well before my time, Citroen having bailed in the early 70s.
Historically all the imports especially the stranger ones do well in college towns. I always assumed they were closer to Athens then Atlanta maybe some kind of writing professor with a cabin or an ag or botanist. A Cajun relative would be funny. Acadiana flag on the roof driven by old Cajun guy with his liberty overalls and no shirt helping make the liquor and run it around or bootleg maple syrup from relative in Quebec.
There’s some guy going around Chapel Hill with a Nissan Pao and a 2CV…oh, wait…
I was with you right up till the shine run. If I was running shine I’d want the most common car make/model possible that just so happens to also have the ability to carry a significant amount of liquid weight. All while looking as inconspicuous as possible…
When I lived in Newhall California and attended CalArts, auto transporters loaded with General Lees would pass through on their way to Valencia Oaks Movie Ranch in Lyons Canyon. And transporters loaded with wreckage at the end of the day
Peugeots are somewhat more common there, ask Columbo.
I read that more than 300 Chargers were wrecked during the show’s run. Peugeot 504s were pretty sturdy but treated the same way I’m sure some would get damaged.
Being a native southerner and lifelong car nut who would have been single digit age for about half of the show’s original run, I would have lost my tiny little mind at the sight of an entire car hauler full of General Lees. Of course, to be fair, if I saw one right this minute, I would probably also lose my 53-year-old mind the same way.
So, it looks like the Atlanta Metro had a Peugeot dealer in the early 70’s, Atlanta is listed as the nearest major city, early episodes were filmed in Covington, which is about halfway between Atlanta and Athens.
I’m not saying it was a member of R.E.M., but I’m not saying it *wasn’t* a member of R.E.M.
It wouldn’t surprise me if that car belonged to Mrs. Stipe, Michael’s mom, and she was visiting her cousin a few miles away in Hazzard that day.
Cousin Jean-Claude Duke was visiting.
Have been informed that Florida “Is Not The South” when I lived there. That must be why there were all sorts of Euro cars that came into my shop for repair. Many Volvo, Saab, Peugeot and Alfa sedans along with the common German and British stuff.
There’s a reason why Bugs Bunny sawed Florida off the map.
There are so many reasons to do that in the now times…
If that cartoon were made today, I would hope that he sawed off the West Coast instead.
Correction:
“Florida – the further south you go, the more north you get.”
Speaking on my authority as Florida Man – greetings from the sugar-white shores of The Redneck Riviera of the Gulf Coast – any o’ y’all who think that Florida ain’t the South obviously ain’t never been to Crestview or Milton or Chipley or Wewahitchka. Or even Pensacola or Tallahassee.
But to be fair:
“Florida’s not really a Southern state after you get south of Gainesville, Florida. You’re back in Michigan.” – Tim Wilson
Exactly. It’s like the “Volvo line” in Maine – go north/west of Augusta, and you might as well be in West Virginia.
Florida – the more south you go in the state, the more north you are.
Certainly true of my corner of it – everyone around me is from NY, NU, MI, WI, and I am from ME. Though other than me and a guy around the corner with an M3, this isn’t really a European car sort of neighborhood. Working class snowbirds in this corner of God’s Waiting Room. Three DIY hotrodders though, which is pretty cool.
That’s wild, I always assumed the wheel receiving the arrows was a Mopar police car wheel. Never dreamed it was a Peugeot.
Yeah, like the way a 1971 Subaru FF-1 most unexpectedly shows up in the background in the 1976 documentary film Harlan County USA which was about the 1973 coal miners strike in southeastern Kentucky: https://www.imcdb.org/i524521.jpg
https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_524521-Subaru-FF-1-G-1971.html
I’m just one state further south (though in a pretty cosmopolitan area where much of its identity is as a college town) but it was still a surprise when my kid acquired his first car which was a 1983 Subaru station wagon (with the Cyclops headlight FTW) a decade ago while in high school and he would talk with various people online & IRL about things Subaru and it turned out he personally knew someone who had grown up in Harlan County and actually knew the family that owned that Subaru FF-1. Talk about a small world…
D’oh, my inner pedant is kicking me, my kid’s Subaru station wagon was actually a ’82, not a ’83. The second car he bought was a ’83 Mercedes 300TD station wagon (to replace the Subaru which was actually a great car and served my kid well through high school but it unfortunately succumbed to rust where it had become quite difficult to open and close the doors due to the chassis sagging from the rust, gah.) The 300TD served him well for several years until he moved further north to the Rust Belt a couple years ago so he’s keeping it here where I’ve been DDing it ever since.
Yeah, station wagons rule 🙂
I loved those 300TD wagons.
300TDs are excellent – I had a lovely ’79 non-turbo example for a bit. A car that teaches patience, but you will always get there with all your stuff.
Apropos of nothing, this reminded me that I met Barbara Kopple back in the late 70s. She was with a high school classmate of mine who was visiting Cambridge MA while I was in graduate school there. I think I understood her significance at the time.
It’s de, not du, at least according to the key fob in my French car:
https://live.staticflickr.com/5219/5387317565_c3daf65d2e_z.jpg
Didn’t many episodes revolve around someone passing through, getting stuck by one of the police many traps to extort $$$? This was obviously left by some liberal arts major from California on his (or likely her) way home to Boston for a holiday, and didn’t make it.
Now she’s washing dishes at the Boars Nest.
Inspector Clouseau came to Hazzard County on a tip. Something about a pink panther running from the law.
Naturally he rented something he was comfortable with.
That would also explain the arrow in the tires. They don’t take too kindly to foreign-folk asking a lot of questions.
All I can see is a scantily clad Catherine Bach. If there something else of note in that photo, I missed it.
I am a fervent Autopian and faithfully married man, but, yeah, this. Certainly early teen me at the time this show was airing agrees.
One French car and one full Brazilian.
Nah. Absolutely no women were “mowing the lawn” back then.
I beg to differ. Bikini waxing was quite common by the 70s. I can personally attest that at least one high school girlfriend and several college girlfriends were regular practitioners with landing strips being a popular choice. There were even home bikini waxing kits as early as the 60s. Now, the full Brazilian method didn’t really drop here until 80s when Hollywood ladies started following the trend they picked up from Brazilian women who’d started going full deforestation when ultra small bikinis and thongs began to be worn there. Commercial Brazilian studios first showed up here in the 80s and the trend took off from there, really hitting its stride in the US in the 90s. Whether or not Catherine Bach was a practitioner during “Dukes” is not verifiable, though it is fact that she was required by network censors to wear flesh colored panty hose to prevent any accidental exposures while cavorting in her famous shorts.
And as a native southerner who was released for the 1972 model year, I can personally guarantee you that the trend had not reached Hazzard County by the time this scene was filmed. Trimming, perhaps, but actual landscaping came much later.
Adolescent boys my age, when I was going through puberty, positively yearned for the sight of pubic hair. It was the facade around the gates of heaven, for crying out loud.
Well, I’m a native Southerner of ‘57 vintage who’d already achieved access to the hidden gate by 1972, so I guess we just chalk up the difference to varied life experiences. I take your point that the character of Daisy in Hazzard County as portrayed in the late 70s to mid 80s probably would not have gone bare down there. And that’s about as far I want to extend this discussion. Been fun.
Heh. Agreed. In fact, I apologize for my part in getting it this far. My mama wouldn’t be impressed.
Right there with you.
People pretend that the General Lee was the star of the show but we all know it was Daisy.
I’m still shocked my very conservative and religious parents let my brother and I watch Dukes of Hazard.
My conservative religious parents used to watch it with me! They didn’t know it then but I was more interested in Bo Duke than Daisy.
To be fair to my folks, they let me read and watch pretty much anything I wanted, something my friends with more conservative, religious parents were envious of. And my whole religious family loves my partner so much, for which I’m thankful.
In my house growing up reading materials, TV and radio were heavily restricted. We had a banner on the TV with Psalm 101:3 “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes”
Damn, that’s rough. I knew other kids whose parents were like that though. I used to smuggle them books and movies.
My wife, a self-described “California hippie liberal,” had the same experience with television as a kid from the other end of the spectrum – her crunchy parents forbade it, other than just a bit of PBS. She was born in 1978, and she has at least a two-decade gap in her then-contemporary pop culture knowledge, as well as all the pop culture knowledge from decades past that you pick up by watching TV, especially reruns.
The best example of this I can think of, especially in an article about “The Dukes Of Hazzard”: when we were first dating, I learned that my now-wife had never seen one minute of “The Andy Griffith Show.” She had absolutely no frame of reference for Barney Fife, Ernest T. Bass, “citizen’s arrest!”, “nip it in the bud,” “Aunt Bea, call the man!”, and so many other memes that are canon to many Americans, and all Southerners in particular – my late uncle referred to the show, only half jokingly, as “educational television.” I had dropped one of these references in conversation and gotten a blank stare, and I smiled and explained that it came from “The Andy Griffith Show.” That’s when she told me she had never seen it, which shocked me but didn’t surprise me, considering her history.
Then she asked me what the show was about, and my explanation went something like this: “Well, Andy Griffith plays Sheriff Andy Taylor, the sheriff in a fictional North Carolina town called Mayberry; and he’s a widower who lives with his son Opie and Aunt Bea, who helps look after the place since Andy’s wife has passed away; and Barney Fife is his bumbling deputy; and much of the show revolves around ridiculous situations involving many of the colorful townsfolk, and HOLY SHIT WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO EXPLAIN TO AN ADULT AMERICAN WHAT THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW WAS ABOUT?!?!? Your parents cheated you out of a proper childhood!”
I had scored a cheap DVD box set of 16 episodes out of a cardboard bin at the grocery store not long before that, so there was no question I needed to break it out and educate my girlfriend. Luckily, one of the episodes was “Mountain Wedding,” which introduced Ernest T. Bass as a character – great first episode to show someone who’s never seen the show. Fast forward to today, and one of our pet names for each other is what Dudd Wash called his fiancee Charlene Darling in that episode: “my darlin’ person.”
That reminds me of one of my favorite “out of the mouths of babes” comments I made as a kid without a filter, circa age ten: the day my grandmother was griping about all the sexual content on TV these days, when I innocently but not so innocently replied, “But Granny, you watch soap operas all day, and they’re only about who is sleeping with who. How is that any different?” My granny turned bright red and mouthed some sort of equivocation to get out of it, while the rest of my adult relatives in the room also turned red, from trying to stifle laughter.
Obviously this thing belong to “Coy and Vance Duke” who spent the first few seasons stalking Bo and Luke, studying every move, every mannerism and the inner workings of the General Lee until they finally made their move – secretly sowing discord between Bo, Luke and the show’s production team, then finally stepping in and passing themselves off as legitimate Duke cousins. Amazing job they did hiding their accents. Who knows how much intel they gathered before Bo and Luke returned and quietly dispatched them.
Invasion Of The Hazzard County Body Snatchers
This is why this site is so damn precious, because my entire life I’ve wondered THE SAME DAMN THING!!
I do remember watching that episode back when it aired, and if memory serves the car was actually part of the inventory at a used car dealership, the owner of which the Duke boys had a beef with. Again, if recall correctly they were going to cut the car in half if they didn’t get what they wanted from said dealer (no idea what that was). But the shakedown worked and so the Pug lived to see another day in its very peculiar home.
Beau and Luc Duc
Beau’s more into Fords though…
We keep it around for profiling purposes, along with a Lada.
Les garcons duc ?