New 1/18 Scale Diecast Cooter's Chevy Camaro from Johnny Lightning

The "Fall Season of new Dukes diecasts" has extended into winter and finally wrapped up with the release of the 1/18 Johnny Lightinig Cooter's Chevy Camaro.  This is one nice diecast.

This is the first 1/18 Johnny Lightning Dukes diecast that is not a re-release and is also the first time Cooter's #99 has been released in this scale.

The car was seen in the season 1 episode "Luke's Love Story."  It is a lot of fun having a new 1/18 and not having to compare it to an old version.  This car has been released several times in 1/64 scale, and Auto World also released a slot car version of it.  Some of those releases had a white stripe on top, and the slot car had no numbers.  This version is the most screen accurate version.

Inside the car is more detailed than the 00 Mustang or the Rosco's Police Car.  It also has a roll bar which the General Lee needs.

The car wasn't featured that much in the episode, and little details like the license plate number weren't seen. The diecast has a blank plate.  The car had a huge hood scoop and Johnny Lightning had to make a custom plastic hood for this car.

It took some shimmying, but I finally got the hood off.  It really didn't want to pop.

This is the most detailed engine I have seen on any Ertl/JL/Tomy Dukes car.

The level of detail the JL took to recreate the unique features of this car is surprising.

They even added the numbers over the headlights.  Cooter couldn't race this bad boy at night.

The box uses the same design we have seen on all the recent Dukes products.

Yep, same blurb.  Feel like I've said that a few times.

This is a great diecast and I am very happy to add it to the Dukes collection.  Releases like this are great because they add depth to the Dukes line.  There are rumors of Daisy's Road Runner Satellite/Road Runner coming out soon.  I can see other cars from the episode "Luke's Love Story" released in the future like the #13 Lucifer.  They seem to like releasing cars that belong to Cooter so why not his purple Road Runner?  I love these seldom seen race cars, but seeing the mainstream cars like Daisy's Jeep, Boss's Caddy, Jesse's Pickup, and Cooter's Tow Truck would be great.  But I know they usually need to have the cast of the car already available to them, and classic muscle cars are much more common in the scale than other cars.

The four cars that have been released in the last year are the Auto World General Lee, Rosco's Police Car, the incorrectly labeled Cooter's Ford Mustang (which is actually Buzz's 00 Mustang), and Cooter's Chevy Camaro.

These are great looking cars.

I got them all out.  Did you think I wasn't gonna have some fun with them?

The first annual DukesCollector over-carpet front office race is about to start.  The racers include Rosco in his patrol car, Cooter in his Camaro, Buzz in the Double Zero, and Bo and Luke in the crowd favorite General Lee.  The race begins.

Early on it looks like Boss Hogg paid off Buzz and and he is trying to take the General Lee out of the race. Cooter takes an early lead.

After the turn, Cooter and Buzz are battling it out for first place, while Rosco is now trying to get those Dukes boys.  But the General narrowly missed the Police car by going on two wheels.

At the finish line, the General Lee jumped over the competion to win the race.  Cooter came in second, Buzz in third, and Rosco crashed before he finished.  What a race!