James Dean is a strange case. He's a Hollywood legend, an American icon, and someone still viewed with deified awe over sixty years after his death at age 24 in a car accident. In a lot of ways, he was the male Marilyn Monroe; while he wasn't nearly as troubled, Dean's life was characterized by childhood eccentricities, an adulthood of excesses, and a legacy of wasted potential. Strangely, he only released three films - only one of which was released while he was alive. His other two films were released posthumously, which resulted in Dean becoming the only actor in the history of American film to earn two posthumous Academy Award nominations. He was also the first male actor in Academy history to be nominated posthumously at all. Naturally, one of the most iconic things about James Dean is how he died. Of course, this isn't to say his accomplishments in life are in any way minimized, but it's hard to separate the man from the context of his passing. Like Grace Kelly, Princess Diana, Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly, Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and even Paul walker, you can't really think about James Dean without being reminded that he died young, and died tragically. Worse still, he died preventably. But we're not really here to debate the senselessness of Dean's death. Rather, we're here to look at one of the more unusual facets of the Dean legend. You see, James Dean was a huge auto enthusiast, and it's one of the passions that would come to define the man to those who knew him. Cars would also factor heavily into the legend surrounding him in the years following his death, as Dean's Porsche 550 Spyder had a touch of the supernatural about it. Well, that's if you believe the tales. This is The Legend of the Little Bastard - The Cursed Porsche. James Dean was born on February 8th, 1931 in Marion, Indiana. His mother, Mildred, was the daughter of a local farmer, and his father, Winton, was an ex-farmer with a Quaker lineage stretching back to the Mayflower, or so it was said Winton eventually quit the farming business to become a dental technician, earning enough money to move Mildred and young James to Santa Monica, California to ride out the depression. However, when Mildred passed away from uterine cancer, James was sent to Fairmount, Indiana to live with his aunt and uncle on their farm. Of course, there were worse places a boy could have been sent, but James was absolutely crushed just the same. Oh, and I'm going to call him James for this boyhood section rather than Dean because there are multiple Deans here, so, yeah. But anyway, It wouldn't have been an exaggeration to call Mildred a beloved mother, considering just how close she and James had grown. As a little boy, James would write down a wish each night and then stuff the paper slip under his pillow. His mother would then sneak into his bedroom and read the piece of paper and then find a way to make the wish come true the following day. And that's just for starters. They shared a love of tap dancing and various expressive arts, with Mildred even going as far as to teach her son how to play the violin. James' bond with his mother was further reinforced by the litany of medical issues that plagued him in his childhood. From myopia, to nosebleeds, to diarrhea, and even anemia. Mildred was the only person capable of handling the young boy's issues, since Winton Dean had his hands full with work. So when James' mother passed away, and he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, it was only natural that he would become a reclusive, introspective boy. His best friend and the only person who truly ever understood him was gone from his life. And there was no one there to really fill the void. Throughout his childhood, James passed a lot of time just tinkering with anything he could find. In addition to the usual farm chores like planting seeds, milking cows, and feeding chickens, James spent most of his afternoons disassembling his bicycle and then putting it back together, over and over and over again. In a way James Dean was sort of like Luke Skywalker You know: dead mother, raised on a farm by his aunt and uncle, tinkered with machines, bad and/or non-existent relationship with his father - you know, the usual. But in much the same way Luke found a father figure in Obi-Wan, James would meet someone to serve as a mentor and friend, albeit with some lingering questions about their relationship. In his adolescence, Dean became friends with a local Wesleyan minister by the name of Reverend James DeWeerd. And this is pretty much where the myth-making of James Dean begins, considering DeWeerd was the man who helped shape Dean's passions. And I'm going to call him Dean from here on out, since I don't want James getting confused with other James's in this story like this DeWeerd fellow. Anyway, DeWeerd was the man who introduced Dean to things like bullfighting, theatre, and, yes, even racing. DeWeerd even took a young Dean to the Indy 500, and it's said that this event was where Dean was first bitten by the automotive bug. Now, rumors of a sexual relationship persist to this day, and if true, then it would mean that Dean was abused as a youth. But, it's hard to really know one way or the other outside of anecdotal evidence that he told Elizabeth Taylor that he had a relationship as a youth with a minister who he refused to name. I suppose part of this is the problem with The Dean Legend. It's hard to really separate fact from fiction with the guy, because so much of it is couched in conjecture and hearsay. There are still on-going debates regarding Dean's sexuality. And while it really, truly doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things whether he liked men or women, it speaks to the larger point that even those who knew him didn't really know him that well. Anyway, when Dean graduated high school in 1949, he moved back to California to live with his father and his new stepmother, with the goal of pursuing acting, since he'd developed a unique talent for onstage expression. To celebrate his graduation, Winton bought James a used 1939 Chevy, which became the new gadget he'd tinker with for days on end. But Dean's newfound relationship with his father was short-lived, as he dropped out of UCLA to pursue acting full-time. Dean's father fully anticipated that his son would fall short of his goals in the entertainment industry, but instead something unexpected happened. James Dean started getting noticed. The rise to fame wasn't exactly instantaneous, but it didn't take too long for the spotlight to find James Dean. This was due to his willingness to wear many different hats in order to get his face and name out there. He worked as a parking lot attendant at CBS studios, and as a stunt tester for the game show "Beat the Clock" in the early 1950s. And he was eventually fired for, well, "Beating the Clock" too quickly. The whole idea was for him to test the challenges, not to actually beat them. He eventually landed a national Pepsi commercial, which was his first nationally televised gig. This was followed by a role as John the beloved disciple in an Easter special titled "Hill Number One." after a string of television cameos and stage work, Dean was admitted to the fabled Actors Studio, to study method acting under the legendary Lee Strasberg. By 1953, he was in the running for the lead role of Cal Trask in Elia Kazan's big-screen adaptation of John Steinbeck's "East of Eden." Steinbeck couldn't stand Dean, but thought he was pitch perfect for the role. Dean was cast, and the rest is history. Over the next two years, he filmed the iconic "Rebel Without a Cause," and the Oscar-nominated classic "Giant" with Elizabeth Taylor, but he would only ever live to see the release of "East of Eden." After filming "East of Eden," Dean had achieved celebrity status, which also meant he had now achieved the means to pursue his other passions. Not long after the completion of filming, Dean had begun stocking his garage with all sorts of automotive interests. He initially purchased a 650cc Triumph Tiger T110 from the 1955 model year, and followed it up with the Sporty 1953 MG TD, before upgrading to a 1955 Porsche Super Speedster, which was purchased just prior to shooting "Rebel Without a Cause." Dean acquired the Speedster through LA-based foreign car dealer Johnny von Neumann, whose Competition Motors was pretty much the place to go if you wanted a prohibitively expensive import in your driveway. In short order, Dean became fixated with fast cars, and the cult of personality surrounding car culture as well. Sure, Dean had always been interested in cars, but, much like with Patrick Dempsey, his Hollywood exploits provided him the means to actually pursue it in earnest. Considering Dean was only on his second major studio picture, his newfound racing obsession hadn't yet become a problem for Warner Bros. Now, this isn't to say that Dean just leapt into the racing world all willy-nilly. By the time he decided to hit the race track, Dean had logged well over a thousand miles on his Speedster, in addition to the countless hours and miles he logged on his previous vehicles, motorcycles included. With the Speedster, Dean honed his high-speed skills on the infamous Mulholland Drive, which had a reputation as a pretty dangerous stretch of road, considering the nasty curve near Laurel Canyon. But no matter the preparation involved, Dean was viewed as a flash in the pan by his automotive enthusiast peers. To them, he was an actor looking to make the crossover to a high-risk sport to satisfy his adrenaline cravings And you know, maybe part of it was true. If anything, Dean did have an itch for speed that he could never seem to properly scratch. Perhaps racing allowed him to achieve a certain independence. Out on the track, Dean didn't have to rely on co-stars or directors or screenwriters to help realize the vision he had for his art. He was a man in charge of his own destiny. There was also a certain intimacy in racing; in the knowledge that your rivals are engaged in the same solitary battle to master their own fears, inhibitions, and impulses. Yes, it was a competition, but there was also a kind of unity in it. So, it's easier to imagine why racing might have appealed to Dean, outside of his youthful desire to go really, really fast. Sure enough, the Speedster help Dean earn his first racing win at Palm Springs in March of 1954. He followed it up in April with a victory at Bakersfield, which helped illustrate to his critics that Dean was serious about developing his skills and pursuing a career in racing. Dean had his sights set on the Memorial Day Race at Santa Barbara, and had every intention of pulling off a hat-trick in his Speedster. However, Dean suffered a major setback when his engine failed during the race. It was a harsh blow to the actor and would-be racer, who already knew he had a long way to go before he could hang with the upper echelon of the sport. With that said, racing never really came across as a momentary fixation for Dean. Whether he would leave Hollywood to eventually pursue racing full-time, or whether he'd just find a way to pursue racing in between film projects, James Dean seemed intent on remaining behind the wheel. But to accomplish his goals, he needed more. Enter the Porsche 550 Spyder. As Road and Track would describe it, the 550 Spyder was Porsche's "first pure racecar, godfather to the likes of the 917, 956, 962, GT1, right up to the 2013 hybrid 918 Spyder," and it had a history as rich as the Porsche brand itself. Basically, after Ferdinand Porsche passed away in 1951, Ferry Porsche looked into creating a proper racing-focused car, and not simply a sports car that would pay lip service to the notion of automotive athleticism. So, Porsche got Dr. Ernst Fuhrmann, the future chairman of Porsche AG in the 1970s, and the man responsible for the 547 engine, otherwise known as the Fuhrmann engine, to head up the engine design for this particular car. Fuhrmann took a boilerplate flat-four and utilized a complicated configuration of gears to create a four-cam set up. Fuhrmann was aiming for something more sophisticated, and this was his ticket, with twin distributors in the intake cam allowing for a dual-plug ignition system, for example. In tandem with Porsche engineer Wilhelm Hild, the team built upon the concept of a mid-engined two-seater with independent suspension and a lightweight aluminum body over a tubular steel ladder chassis. In addition, a dry-sump lubrication system was introduced, utilizing multiple oil pumps, alongside a separate oil reservoir in order to keep the aluminum block light and improve aerodynamics. The 550 Spyder was one of Porsche's most elegantly designed cars up to that point. From here, the engine was to have 1498cc displacement, creating a car that made 110 horsepower at 6,200 RPM and 89 torque at 5,000 RPM Once completed, the Spyder could get from 0 to 60 in just 7 seconds, and reach top speeds of 124 miles per hour. The first 550 Spyder was unveiled at the Paris Salon car show in 1953, and before long the car built an impressive reputation in worldwide racing circuits when paired with talent such as Stirling Moss and Umberto Maglioli. The car had a knack for bringing the purest automotive athlete out of the men driving them, earning wins at Nürburgring, Targa Florio, and Le Mans. Dean believed the 550 Spyder would do the same for him as it did for the Hans Hermanns of the world. To the surprise of no one, the 550 Spyder was a notoriously difficult prize to get ahold of stateside, as plenty of racers and celebrities alike were after one of the mere handful of models produced at the time. And why not? This is a car that conquered its class in Le Mans and Carrera Panamericana. It proved capable of handling the most challenging racing conditions of the era, offering light weight, dynamic handling, and a particularly robust engine for its time. It was everything Dean was looking for, and it would be the ruin of him. By the fall of 1955, Dean had completed filming on "Giant," during which he had been prohibited from racing by the studio. Not that this really stopped him from keeping up with his auto pursuits. Dean had initially ordered a Lotus Mark IX from local Burbank auto dealer Jay Chamberlain, but the car was severely delayed. So, Dean looked for an alternative. Competition Motors was pretty much the only place in America you could find a Porsche 550 Spyder at the time, and even then, Competition Motors only received five of them. However, Dean had a connection with von Neumann, so he was able to snag one. In order to acquire one of the new Spyders, Dean traded in his beloved Super Speedster, while also agreeing to von Neumann's condition that he employ Competition Motors' field engineer and Porsche factory mechanic Rulf Wütherich as his mechanic for all future races. Dean's was the 55th spider to be built out of only 90 ever produced. This led to its serial number being a palindrome: 550-055; same forward, same backwards. On September 19, 1955, Dean formally purchased the Spyder, along with a Ford Country Squire station wagon, onto which he intended to hitch a trailer for towing the car between races. Already, Dean had the Salinas road races coming up on October 1st and 2nd, so he had to make up for lost time and get some experience behind the wheel of this "Giant Killer" if he was ever going to have any hope of avoiding a grim repeat of the Memorial Day race at Santa Barbara. Of course, Dean wanted to put his own personal stamp on the Spyder, so he hired Dean Jeffries, who, with partner von Dutch, was a well-known painter and pinstriper in the Lynwood area. He had Jeffries paint his Salinas race number, #130, to the hood, both doors, and the rear. He also had Jeffries write the nickname he devised for the car between the rear engine grille and the license plate holder. The nickname was allegedly something that Warner Bros. Studio head Jack Warner had been known to have called him in the past: the "Little Bastard." The final day of Dean's life was Friday September 30, 1955. That morning, Dean and Wütherich were preparing the Little Bastard for the Salinas races, since Dean hadn't been afforded as much time with the Porsche prior to the races as he probably would've liked. You have to remember, he logged over a thousand miles on the speedster before he ever attempted racing it, and he traversed a wide variety of terrains in preparation for the challenges that would face him as a racer. But, he wasn't really provided that luxury with the Spyder, since he'd so recently acquired it. You can make the argument that Dean wouldn't have needed long to become accustomed to the car, but, this wasn't just any car. It was designed with a more skilled class of racer in mind than a guy like James Dean, who had talent but wasn't anywhere near the experience level of some of his more successful contemporaries. At first, the plan was for Dean's friend Bill Hickman to take the Country Squire and trailer the Little Bastard in back. They would be joined by Sanford Roth, a photographer with Collier's magazine who intended to publish a story on Dean's racing career. However, Wütherich believed it would be a better idea for Dean to drive the Little Bastard to Salinas himself, since he hadn't had nearly enough time behind the wheel. Although it was a quarter past 1 in the afternoon, the group decided to have a late breakfast at Hollywood Ranch Market, across the street from Competition Motors on Vine. After the group set out from Competition Motors, they made a stop at the Casa De Petrol service station on Ventura Boulevard at Beverly Glen in Sherman Oaks, California, where the iconic photo of Dean and the Little Bastard was taken. The group then made its way north on Route 99 toward Bakersfield. At around 3:30 that afternoon, Dean was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol on Wheeler Ridge in the San Joaquin Valley, South of Bakersfield. Dean had been driving 65 in a 55, and Hickman received a hefty fine as well, since he was 20 miles per hour over the speed limit for any vehicle towing a trailer. Because, you have to remember, even though the Little Bastard wasn't in the trailer, he was still bringing the trailer along anyway. It was after the patrolman departed that the group came up with an idea that, while not necessarily a bad thought in itself, ultimately proved to have tragic consequences. Now, it's not certain who thought of it first, although it wouldn't be surprising to learn that Dean proposed it. The idea was to cut through Route 166/33 to bypass downtown Bakersfield and come out at Blackwell's Corner on Route 46. It was at Blackwell's corner where Dean would make his last stop, meeting up with fellow Salinas-bound racers Lance Reventlow and Bruce Kessler. The gang all agreed to meet for dinner at Paso Robles a few hours later However, en Route to Paso Robles, Dean made the impetuous decision to speed up and leave the Country Squire in the dust. Dean tore ass down Route 46, attempting to make the most of his last chance at wheel time in the Little Bastard prior to the races. If he was ever going to be taken seriously as a racer, he had to test himself. You know, he had to push his limits right? But, no. Sadly, Dean's Luck ran out. And it ran out when a 1950 Ford Custom Coupe driven by 23 Year-old Cal Poly student Donald Turnupseed moved to take the Left Fork on Route 41. Dean's last words were reportedly "He's got to see us," but it was 5:45 p.m. and the sun was low on the horizon, screwing with Turnupseed's view of the porsche screaming in his direction. By the time he saw the Little Bastard, it was too late. Turnupseed slammed the brakes, while Dean fell back on his racing instincts and tried to power steer the Little Bastard out of harm's way. But there wasn't enough room and not nearly enough time, so the cars collided, with the Little Bastard flipping through the air and coming to a crash onto its wheels. Dean was mangled in the crash, with his left foot caught between the brake pedal and the cluth, while Wütherich was thrown from the car all together and deposited on the side of the road. Hickman and Roth arrived in the station wagon not long after the crash, with the photographer later declaring that the Little Bastard looked "like a crumpled pack of cigarettes." One can only imagine how much worse this accident would have been, had another car been directly behind the Porsche at the time. Needless to say, the tragedy here is similar to the tragedy that afflicted Princess Diana, in that, it took so long for emergency services to arrive at the hospital, that what little hope there had been for Dean was essentially lost. In this instance, the delay wasn't due to any external forces impeding the ambulance's ability to actually get going. Rather, the delay in treatment was due to the remoteness of the crash site, as the nearest hospital was the Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, which was over 28 miles away. Wütherich survived with a double-fractured jaw and countless injuries to his legs and torso, while Turnupseed suffered a broken nose and cuts to his face. But because the Porsche's driver's side had taken the brunt of the impact, Dean wasn't so lucky. The actor suffered a broken neck, severe head trauma and massive internal bleeding. By the time the ambulance made it to the hospital, it was too late. James Dean was pronounced dead on arrival. He was just 24 years old. In a spooky, ironic coda to all this, Dean had filmed a road safety PSA prior to his death, in which he encouraged young drivers to slow down, stating "the life he might save might be mine." Spookier still, just one week before the accident, Obi-Wan Kenobi himself, Sir Alec Guinness, issued a warning to Dean after seeing the Little Bastard up close, declaring that Dean would be dead in a week if he drove the thing. Sure enough, Dean laughed it off, as if listening to Obi-Wan Kenobi was some sort of bad idea for a guy who grew up like Luke Skywalker. But then, even the creepiness of the circumstances surrounding Dean's death were less peculiar than the legend that would arise from its aftermath, namely that the Little Bastard was cursed. The first rumors of the Little Bastard curse came from car customizer George Barris. Allegedly, sometime after the crash, Barris purchased the wreckage of the Little Bastard for $2500, which is around $22,605 today. Anxious to turn a profit, he turned around and sold it to Dr. William Eschrich, a surgeon from Burbank who moonlighted as a racer for Cal Club, and his friend and fellow doctor, Troy McHenry. You see, Eschrich needed a new Motor for his Lotus Mark VIII, and figured the four-cam motor used in the Little Bastard would serve him well at the Pomona races. Sadly, he couldn't have been more wrong. Eschrich struggled like he rarely had before, sustaining some pretty bad injuries when the Lotus inexplicably locked up on him. The result? Eschrich spun wildly out of control and rolled over in the middle of a turn. But even then, he didn't suffer as badly as his buddy Troy McHenry, who was killed when his car lost control and smashed into a tree. As it turns out, McHenry had borrowed the Little Bastard's transaxle to use in his own Spyder. Following the accident, there was debate over just what caused the malfunctions in the first place, with the operating theory being that the crash was caused by steering failure that had nothing to do with the salvaged pieces from the Little Bastard. But with two deaths under its belt, and major injuries to three other men, there was enough of a foundation on which to build the curse mythology. So why is Barris credited with getting the myth off the ground and not Eschrich? Well, for one Eschrich never believed in the legend, simply chalking up his accident and his friend's death to bad luck and standard equipment failure. But as one of the men to popularize modern custom car culture in the United States, it behooved Barris to see that the legend only grew, since he had come to reacquire the parts to the Little Bastard. In further promoting the legend, Barris beefed up his role in the creation of the car, while also exaggerating his friendship with the late Dean. For instance, Barris claimed that Dean came to him for advice on what to do with the car's exterior design, even asking if Barris could do the paint job on the Little Bastard for him. Barris allegedly told Dean that they should add a red stripe to each fender, and he even got von Dutch to do the racing stripes for Dean. But according to Porsche historian Lee Raskin, the racing stripes would have already been on the car when it was delivered to Competition Motors. Oh, and remember Dean Jeffries? The painter and pinstriper who'd built a reputation in the LA area? He had actual records proving he did all the painting on the Little Bastard himself. According to Jeffries, not only were Barris and Dean not friends, Barris never even saw the car up close while Dean was alive, much less touch or work on it. Now, while it's true that Barris absolutely did have Hollywood connections, and would later go on to produce such pop culture icons as the original Batmobile, Barris made himself an integral part of the mythos of the Little Bastard, such as when he claimed that, while the car was in park at his shop, it sprung to life, changed gears and crashed into a wall. It was that kind of absurd myth-making that helped Barris spread the legend of the Little Bastard far and wide; that and a considerable amount of physical resources. With the majority of the bodywork rendered unsalvageable, Barris decided to recreate the car from the scraps he had left, and cover it in a sheet metal body He would later loan the car out as a touring display for the California Highway Patrol as part of an exhibit on automotive safety. The car was a popular exhibit, since interest in Dean remained high, but the curse mythos had yet to take hold. 20 years later, Barris would use his autobiography to perpetuate what many believed to be an entirely apocryphal history for the Little Bastard. To hear Barris tell it, he purchased the Little Bastard from Dean's family after the crash, and he had it transported to his shop. However in the process of unloading it off the truck, it supposedly fell and crushed the legs of one of the mechanics. After the death of Dr. Troy McHenry, Barris would go on to claim that another man was paralyzed after using a transaxle from the Little Bastard. Later, a fire at a car garage in Fresno would allegedly burn every single car, except for the cursed Spyder which went virtually unharmed. From there, Barris will claim that even people who'd been passengers in the car were cursed. In this instance, Barris relays a fuzzy piece of history. He alleges that Rolf Wütherich, Dean's sole passenger in the Little Bastard, was convicted of murdering his wife. While it's been said that Wütherich snapped during an argument with his wife, and then proceeded to stab her 14 times with a kitchen knife before trying to commit suicide himself, both husband and wife supposedly survived in this story. So you can't really be convicted of killing someone you didn't successfully kill, right? But... this is the thing. Like, it's hard to prove that this story actually happened. It really is hard to find any independent corroboration for the stabbing itself, outside of a few history related articles about the James Dean crash. I mean, I tried like hell to find a police report or a special interest piece of Wütherich's life that might have mentioned the incident. But, I had no such luck. The best I could find was the History Channel website's official write up on the Dean curse. In short, it's a smaller mystery embedded within the larger mythos of this Dean curse. And we'll come back to why this Wütherich thing might be so elusive a bit later. But, for now, let's turn back to the string of oddities surrounding this car. Through Barris, the tale of the curse escalated with countless stories. For example, A truck transporting the car to Salinas skidded and the driver, a man by the name of George Barkhuis, was thrown from his truck and then crushed to death when the Little Bastard fell off the flatbed. Now two years after that, the car supposedly broke in half and scattered onto the freeway, nearly causing a fatality. And then, the car was later moved to an exhibit in Sacramento, where it broke a teenager's hip after falling from its display. A thief would then rip his arm to the bone on a jagged piece of metal while attempting to steal the steering wheel off the Little Bastard. But, it keeps going. S--you se--... Two tires from the Spyder that Barris had sold to a New York auto enthusiast blew out on the highway, and caused the man's car to go careening into a ditch. Later, a collector who salvaged a piece of metal from the cursed car would plead with Barris and take the wretched souvenir off his hands, claiming that not long after acquiring the piece of scrap, he lost his wife, his kid, his house, his job, and his health, since he made the phone call to Barris from a hospital bed where he was currently engaged in dying. In general, these claims seem silly, but they take on mythic proportions in their totality. Just one of these things happening would be insane, but all of them? It seems like a cut and dry case, no? Like, this thing has to be cursed, right? Except, according to aforementioned Porsche historian Lee Raskin, many of these claims are outright falsehoods. More pointedly. the only confirmed and corroborated story of the curse is the death of Dr. Troy McHenry, and the injuries to Dr. William Eschrich. Everything else is just wild speculation, and that's mostly because Barris neglected to offer any names or documentation to support his claims. The truck driver who supposedly was crushed to death when the Little Bastard fell off his flatbed? Well, despite having the unique name of George Barkhuis, no such obituary or accident report turned up with that name. Basically, very little about the curse is supported by objective fact. And this is where we come back to Rolf Wütherich. I mean, I suppose if you want to claim that Wütherich's downward spiral is a part of the curse, you can claim that, although to what extent is difficult to prove. Although it's true that Wütherich was killed in a drunk driving accident in 1981, after decades of depression surrounding the Dean crash, that's not so much a curse as the long black hand of guilt having it's poke. After having countless surgeries to repair his hip in the six months following the crash, Wütherich struggled to find employment, having been canned by Competition Motors for being "unruly." He tried to salvage a career as a freelance Porsche mechanic, and then served off and on with the Porsche racing team in the late 1950s, before alcoholism and severe depression really took hold. In 1979, he returned to Germany to find work with a Honda dealer, only to eventually succumb to his demons in the aforementioned drunk driving accident in July 1981, as an intoxicated Wütherich lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a home in the town of Kupferzell. Naturally, Wütherich's immense guilt is occasionally used as circustantial evidence for the theory that it had been Wütherich driving the Little Bastard when the crash occurred, and not Dean. But considering the driver's side took the brunt, of the impact it's likely that Wütherich would have been killed rather than Dean had he actually been driving. I guess if you want to find something creepy to note, you can point out that Turnupseed, the driver of the coupe that crashed into Dean, died the same year as Wütherich, in 1981. He passed away from cancer and, like Wütherich, refused to talk about the crash outside of the official deposition. Turnupseed was cleared of any wrongdoing, since it was determined that the sunset, coupled with the neutral color of the Porsche, made it difficult to see what was coming. Ultimately, the crash had effects on those who survived it, but that's to be expected of any car accident. That doesn't elevate the legend to the level of a curse. But, many believe it anyway, for much the same reason it's believed that Lee Harvey Oswald couldn't have acted alone. It's hard to imagine someone as substantial as james dean meeting such an inglorious end So, what happened to the Little Bastard? Well, Barris claims that the car vanished in the 1960s while being transported on the train from Florida to California. Never mind that he would contradict himself in a 2011 interview with the claim that it was lost in New York. At the time of its disappearance Barris hired a private investigator to get to the bottom of the case. His name was J.J. Arms, which is kind of an ironic name for a guy who lost both of his hands at age 11. As it turns out, he and his 18-year old friend broke into a railroad station house and stole some railway torpedo sticks. J.J. rubbed the two torpedo sticks together and they detonated, completely mutilating his hands. But here's the thing: J.J. Armes is awesome! He briefly pursued acting before starting his own private investigation agency, and he even released action figures of himself through his J.J. Armes toy line, with detachable prosthetics, and a bunch of gadgets, and a whole mobile investigation unit; he was basically Inspector Gadget Basically. At least in action figure form. But I digress. After an extensive investigation into the cars whereabouts prior to its disappearance, Armes came to the conclusion that the car must have been stolen while in Florida, rather than upon arrival in California, since there was no evidence of it ever having been loaded onto a truck or train of any kind. But the car never turned up in Florida, despite an exhaustive search. Throughout the years, there have been rumors of its discovery, and publicity stunts to drum up interest in the investigation. The most famous stunt was from the Volo Auto Museum in Illinois. You see, they offered to pay $1,000,000 to anyone who came forward with the actual Little Bastard, provided Barris could authenticate it first. Never mind that this is chump change for anyone in possession of the real thing, since it's likely the true Little Bastard would go for a number in the tens of millions of dollars. Ultimately, no one spoke up, until exactly 10 years later on the 60th anniversary of Dean's passing: September 30th, 2015. A man came forward claiming to know where the Little Bastard had been stored. As his story goes, the man claims that, as a child in the 1960s, he witnessed his father and a group of men store the car behind a false wall in a building somewhere in Whatcom County, Washington. However, the man's story is pretty suspect, since he refused to reveal the location of this building until he receives half of the Volo reward. With that said, the man did pass a polygraph test and was even able to name some details about the car that only someone who'd seen it in person would know. But still, it's kind of strange -- like who has memory that clear when they're six years old and retains it when they're a fully grown adult? I-I-I don't know. I have vague memories from when I was six, maybe all the drinking, M'eahhh, I don't know. In short, this man was the most credible lead to the Little Bastard in two generations, but talks broke down over money, since it's not as though the man had any claim on the building the Little Bastard was supposedly stored in, nor does he have any claim on the Little Bastard itself. But then, there was also the issue of whether Barris or his estate even had a claim on the car, since there was no documentation proving ownership. So it was a muddy situation, with no real hope of ever getting any clearer. To make matters worse, less than 2 months after the mystery man came forward, Barris passed away in his sleep at age 89. From what I could find, the Volo Auto Museum has yet to come to any agreement with the mystery tipster, so this case remains unsolved and the whereabouts of Dean's Little Bastard remains unknown. But then, part of the mystique of James Dean is that quality of vagueness. He wouldn't have been an idol to so many people had he been as excessively real as your average Joe. This isn't to say that dean wasn't a man of depth and definable richness formed by a life of hardship and emotional isolation Rather, Dean is an enigma, someone who is both knowable through his passion, yet, unknowable past those surface identifiers. The question of who James Dean was is invariably eclipsed by the question of what he might have done had he lived. 24 is far too young for anyone to die, much less someone capable of leaving an impression as indelible as Dean has in his films. But while 24 is young, it's not so young to pass into legend and live forever in its crucible Thanks for listening to this RCR Stories guys. It's strange -- I kind of wanted this to be a quickie, because this is a story that I always kind of wanted to do, but, again, this was one of those things where I bit off more than I could chew and started writing it and realize how much more story there was tell than I initially thought, so I just kind of kept writing until the story, sort of, came together. You know, the first RCR Stories, about the Dale, that was maybe 5 or 6 pages, and then the Edsel story was 7 or 8 pages, and then the Chrysler one was 9 pages, and this is about 10 pages, so, if the next one is 11 pages you'll know why. But, I'm really trying to keep these a bit shorter to tell a more clear and concise story. And, uh, either way, I hope you guys have enjoyed listening to this, because I really enjoy doing this, because these are stories that really interest me, and I'm going to look into some of the suggestions that you guys have made but, I just really wanted to get out there and tell stories that I had some familiarity with. Either way, thank you so much for listening, and I hope to see you guys for the next RCR. You guys really are great, and I'm convinced that we have some of the best fans on YouTube, but that's probably rambling a bit too much. Either way, have a great week, and I hope to see you again for the next RCR and the next RCR stories, whenever that comes, because I have no idea how long it'll take each time I set out to write something, but I hope you enjoyed this and I'll talk to you next time.
