James Dean's Last Drive: The Crash

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you [Music] around 5:30 p.m. Jimmy and Rob left Blackwell's corner and headed up over the hill to another small town called Chelan again everyone pronounces the name of this town differently but I choose to use the pronunciation I hear from my buddy max grant who not only grew up there but his grandmother ran the post office a half mile from the crash site she also worked with Yeti Onishi another name I am sure to be pronouncing wrong and together they got the James Dean memorial built and installed in its current location with no traffic cameras and no film crew around we can only surmise exactly what happened at 5:45 p.m. on Friday September 30th 1955 at the intersection of Highway 466 and 41 we know that both James Dean and donald turnupseed the young college kid who hit james had passed cars just before the accident we know that the speed limit was 55 miles an hour but no one travels that slow going cross-country through California's hot Central Valley especially in September we also know that bill Hickman and Sanford Roth Jimi's travel companion got to the crash site about 10 minutes after the wreck the distance from Blackwell's corner to Shalem is just about 30 miles at 60 miles an hour they should take about 30 minutes according to Lee raskins book James Dean on the road to Salinas Jimmy and his friends left Blackwell's corner at 5:30 p.m. jimmy and ralph crashed in Shalem at 5:45 p.m. Sanford Roth and Bill Hickman arrived 10 minutes later at 5:55 p.m. that means that the station wagon covered 28 miles in 25 minutes which would make sense if your having sixty miles an hour and a new Ford station wagon with a v8 all of this means that if James Dean went from Blackwell's corner to Shalem in 15 minutes he had to be going 120 miles an hour it is simple math and physics the only way for an object to cover 30 miles in 15 minutes is to travel at 120 miles an hour and keep in mind that 120 is an average speed James Dean most likely just filled up the tank you can't expect a small car with a full tank of gas to adult men and just over a hundred horsepower to travel 120 miles an hour uphill on a winding road but coming downhill in a straight line all that weight works in your favor so if he was driving less than 120 going uphill from Blackwell's then he had to be going faster than 120 coming downhill into Shalem to average 120 miles an hour James Dean supposedly told Bruce Kessler at the gas station that he had already gone over 120 miles an hour on the way up from Hollywood remember the top speed for a 1955 Porsche Spyder is nearly a hundred and 40 miles an hour so you do the math whatever the speed the end result was still the same James Dean passed mr. and mrs. white and their Pontiac just before the crash they said they were traveling around 65 miles an hour when the spider passed them like they were standing still or in excess of 85 miles an hour donald turnupseed was driving home from school in his 1950 Ford Tudor as he approached the y-shaped intersection heading east he started to turn left across traffic onto highway 41 north there is no traffic light or stop sign heading east or west on 466 and highway 41 just veers off to the left if you are heading east on 466 so you don't need to slow down much to make the turn stories differ on turnip seeds actions supposedly he starts the turn thinking he has plenty of time before the spider gets to the intersection then he backs out of the turn after he realizes the spider is approaching way faster than he thought Jimmy turns to avoid the bored but it is too late just missing a direct head-on collision the Ford hits the driver's side of the Spyder with this left front corner the impact reportedly flips the Porsche into the air and launches Raw out of the car both land off the road many yards away the front left wheel of the Ford is smashed nearly all the way up to the firewall the Ford spins around and slides backwards 39 feet as it continues on its path eastward the driver's door on the Porsche is completely destroyed and Jimmy and the steering wheel are both smashed up against the passenger side of the car his feet were crushed and trapped under the brake and clutch pedals his arms legs neck and skull have been broken in several places Jimmy had pieces of broken glass in his face the Spyders windshield was Plexiglas and his glasses were reportedly found away from the car so the only place the glass could have come from was the headlights of the fourth since the driver's door of the Porsche in the front corner of the Ford near the headlight took the brunt of the impact then it is safe to assume that the last thing Jimmy saw was the headlight of the Ford hitting him in the face at over 100 miles an hour again look at the height of the driver's head while sitting in the spider and the height of the front headlight on a 1950s four so you got to ask yourself one question how fast does a thirteen hundred pound aluminum car need to be going to create enough force to smash the front suspension all the way up to the firewall on a 3200 pound car made from heavy Detroit steel when the car covers 30 miles in 15 minutes which in simple math is an average speed of 120 miles an hour I got to believe he was doing anywhere from 85 to 120 miles an hour believe what you want but go out and try and smash the front fender crossmember and suspension of a 1954 I rest my case as I look at all the evidence and my own personal experience I have taken a second thought about donald turnupseed yes i think he was speeding but that is anything over 55 miles an hour yes he had a two-tone paint job and supposedly new racing intake manifold on his car which would mean he was a hot rod yes he was probably in a hurry to get home after a week at school I'm sure he was not expecting to see a two foot tall silver racecar approaching him on a two-lane highway at over 100 miles an hour so he misjudged the closing speed of the two cars and their inability to occupy the same space and time in the universe but Jimmy was at fault also he was speeding he was not wearing a seat belt but I don't think that would make a difference in this case he was probably in a hurry to get the passer rolls to meet his friends for dinner and he just made a public service announcement about not driving fast on the street because you don't know what the other guy is going to do you always have to be on the alert and as they say leave yourself and out it is what doctor who calls a fixed point in time there's one of the iconic points in mankind it was and will always be meant to be I cannot change what happened even if you wanted to as much as we would love to go back and change history it would probably destroy the fabric of space and time so we are left with what might have been also the story that James Dean said he's got to see us just before the crash is totally bogus the only person who would have heard him say that was wrong James Dean's friend and racing buddy Luke rocker told me that Rob did not speak any English so we're all English was bad at best and he has said many times that he did not remember anything just before or after the crash I think you can understand now why James Dean fans all around the world myself included are so fascinated by this event

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Channel: SanDiegoHotRod

Views: 221,150

Rating: 4.7358489 out of 5

Keywords: james, dean, deans, dean's, last, final, drive, day, birthday, Sept, september, 30, 1955, friday, Rolf, wutherich, sieta, onishi, memorial, crash, accident, donald, cholame, blackwell's, corner, snow, productions, shannon, wafford

Id: 4wnxM1qg76Y

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Length: 8min 29sec (509 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 08 2017

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