I had one of these too! At the time, I was really young and wasn't really into the TV show and didn't really understand what any of it was even about, and so I was initially totally oblivious to the whole General Lee thing and was just kinda bummed that it was a pedal car and not motorized like a Power Wheels was and didn't even look much like one. Mostly, I was just afraid I was going to get made fun of. I soon came to terms with it and decided that at least it was orange(which was my fav color), and that it was certainly better than nothing. And then I realized how much faster I could go with the pedals if I wanted to, especially on those newer, flatter sidewalks that didn't have the little pebbles and stones embedded into the concrete and the big wide cracks that would slow you down and make the wheels slip a bit. Holy jeez - it was almost like a bike with four wheels! My dad even cut some strips off of a roll of rubbery adhesive weatherstripping stuff and hot-glued it onto the wheels so it would keep better traction. A couple of kids did actually try to make fun of it at first, right up until they tried to race me. It was never even close, as I could easily make that thing go 5x faster than any Power Wheels car. And with 4 padded "tires"(which I remember getting shredded up pretty quickly and having to be replaced multiple times), I could even go faster than a Big Wheel, but with way better steering and control! Within a couple days, other kids were begging me to let them ride around in it, and it ended up being one of the very rare times when I got to feel like the cool kid for once. And, naturally, because this was early-80's, "be back when the street lights come on" days, we were obsessed with trying to do things like jump it over crappily-crafted ramps and find the biggest, steepest street on a hill, so that we could try and go even faster. I think it finally died when one of us crashed it and broke/mangled the whole pedal-axle mechanism underneath.
Thank you so much for making me remember this fun little death racer and an awesome little memory from my childhood!