Today’s Cursed Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
“The Curse of James Dean’s Car” gathered momentum over the years following Dean’s death, resulting in a total of twelve documented fatalities in which the “haunted car” was allegedly involved. Celebrity car customizer George Barris bought the mangled wreck of the “Little Bastard” to sell off some of the undamaged parts. Barris claims that Dean’s car was “wild-looking, evil-looking,” and gave him the creeps. He says he always had a “bad feeling” about the Porsche – which lacked the safety features of similar models – and apparently had warned Jimmy many times about the car. When the smashed vehicle was delivered to Barris’s yard, it allegedly rolled off the back of the delivery truck and broke a mechanic’s legs. A Beverly Hills doctor, Troy McHenry, who also raced cars, bought the engine from the “Little Bastard,” transferred it to another car, and was killed the first time he drove it. A fellow doctor who bought the transmission put it in his own car and was then seriously injured in a crash, and a man in New York who bought two of the Porsche’s tires spent weeks in hospital when they both “mysteriously” blew out at the same time. A year later the curse claimed another victim, when the remaining shell of the car was being transported to a public road-safety exhibition in Salinas and the driver of the transporter was killed as the truck skidded and crashed. After that, the remains of the wrecked Porsche disappeared in the Florida Keys – and have not been heard of since – although individual relics occasionally crop up from time to time, like pieces of Christ’s “true cross”. Kenneth Anger, for one, confesses to owning a piece of Dean’s death car, which he bought for the bargain price of $300.
The wrecked remains of the Porsche James Dean was driving the night he was killed in a collision with another automobile October 1, 1955 Paso Robles, California, USA
Culled from: Car Crash Culture
Stories like this just break my heart. That relic should have been safeguarded in a museum immediately!
Crash Scene Reconstruction
While looking for pics of Lil’ Bastard, I stumbled across an interesting professional reconstruction of the crash. However, some of the animation they reference doesn’t appear to be on the site – but I did find them on You Tube.
James Dean’s View Animation:
Donald Turnipseed’s View (yes, that’s really his name):
