James Dean Owned “Little Bastard” for Just Nine Days
As September 30 approaches, so does the 71st anniversary of James Dean’s death. The actor was only 24 when he left Hollywood on September 30, 1955, driving toward a sports-car race in Salinas, California. Beside him was Porsche mechanic Rolf Wütherich. Dean’s car was practically new: a silver Porsche 550 Spyder, chassis 550-0055, purchased from Competition Motors just nine days earlier and decorated with racing number 130 and the nickname “Little Bastard.” Porsche’s lightweight racer weighed only about 1,200 pounds and produced roughly 110 horsepower, enough for a top speed approaching 140 mph.
Shortly before 6 p.m., near Cholame, Donald Turnupseed turned his Ford across the Porsche’s path at the junction of highways 466 and 41. Dean was killed, while Wütherich survived with severe injuries. The subsequent investigation treated the collision as an accident, and exactly how fast Dean was traveling remains debated. What happened to the Porsche afterward may be even harder to untangle. Its wreckage became the raw material for one of the strangest automotive legends of the 20th century.
The Wreck Was Taken Apart Before the Legend Really Began
The familiar story says Hollywood customizer George Barris bought Dean’s smashed Porsche and that a series of terrible accidents followed everyone who touched it. The documented history is less supernatural and more interesting. After Dean’s insurer declared the car a total loss, Southern California racer and physician William Eschrich acquired the wreck. Useful mechanical components were removed, including the four-cam engine and transaxle, before the battered remains ultimately ended up with Barris. Eschrich installed the Porsche engine in a Lotus race car, while other components found their way into the hands of fellow racers. Porsche itself now acknowledges that Eschrich acquired the remains before Barris became involved.
Barris turned what remained into a traveling traffic-safety exhibit and aggressively promoted the idea that “Little Bastard” was cursed. Many of the most famous stories cannot be independently substantiated, and Porsche historian Lee Raskin has argued that Barris embellished or invented much of the mythology. There is even uncertainty about how much of the wreck Barris displayed. Raskin believes portions of the exhibit may have been reconstructed with new aluminum panels to recreate the appearance of the crash. One strange incident is documented: while stored in Fresno in March 1959, the exhibit caught fire, scorching paint and burning two tires.
So Where Is James Dean’s Porsche Today?
According to Barris, the remains were sent to a safety exhibition in Florida around 1960 and then shipped back toward Los Angeles. When the supposedly sealed transport container arrived, the Porsche was gone. No confirmed complete wreck has surfaced since. That story has been repeated for decades, but it comes largely from Barris himself, which creates an obvious problem. Raskin has suggested that Barris may have intentionally made the increasingly tired attraction disappear, turning the disappearance itself into one final piece of James Dean mythology.
What is certain is that parts of chassis 550-0055 survived. The original four-speed transaxle, serial number 10 046, was authenticated through Porsche documentation and sold on Bring a Trailer in 2021 for an astonishing $382,000. Other pieces have surfaced or been claimed over the years, while the original engine has also been reported as surviving separately. That means the real mystery may not simply be “Where is Little Bastard?” It is figuring out exactly which pieces remained together, which were scattered, and whether the chassis Barris displayed still exists somewhere.
That is a mystery I may eventually try to follow myself. I am considering producing a documentary that would retrace the known locations of Dean’s Porsche, from Competition Motors in Hollywood and his final route through California to the wreck’s post-crash owners, storage locations, safety exhibitions and last reported movements. The goal would be more ambitious than retelling the curse: separate documented history from decades of publicity and, ultimately, attempt to determine whether anything identifiable as the missing remains of James Dean’s Porsche can still be found. Seventy-one years after Dean’s death, that question remains unanswered. It is certainly one of the most famous missing cars ever.
