$1M offered for James Dean death car

I distinctly remember the eBay auction for the transaxle, which I think brought around $140,000. Biggest price I ever saw for a car part. They had fairly extensive documentation matching the transaxle's stamping # to the James Dean Spyder, including affidavits from the Porsche factory. If it was a forgery, it must have been a pretty damned good one.

 

he never got any attention for being @ fault because he was found to not be @ fault @ time of accident,and sure some 40 to 50 years later some people on a computer who were probably not alive when it happened stated there thoughts by a computer program, no matters who fault it was it was infact an accident and donald turnupseed got more crap for it then any young man deserves if i was just some schmuck in a porshe no one would have care but people act as if donald walked up to dean and shot him in the face! its to bad

 

this without all the other parts(which im sure they had to cut it apart to get to) has to look like nothing but a twisted piece of metal now that barely even resembles a car.

i dont have rights to these pictures but they are on google.






some say thats james on the ground, but i think it was the passenger because the head turns from picture to picture.






custom shoebox?

 

i stand corrected, they kinda beat it back into some sort of shape afterwords. i found this picture on the selvedgeyard blog.


http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.co...-silver-spyder-porschedean-mystery-revisited/

 

That intersection is still pretty scketchy really. My Girlfriend and I still kind of get the chills when we drive through there. Sad on so many levels........

 

I'd like to have the Kennedy Lincoln, uncleaned, magic bullit intact. A new dance move Back, and to the left! Zapruder bust a move! They got it right in Dallas!

 

^^^ ahaha

 

A million bucks for a small hunk of scrap aluminum???... Insane!

 

And that was 6 years ago!!

 

^^^^^^ Now that's pretty "slick" Willy.......

 

ha ha slick willy the long dead thread rising picture is awesome lmfao

 

this story has been hashed and rehashed. Engine and trans were sold a couple of times to racers. According to my sources, there wasn't much left of the car, but some pieces were sold off. The "Dean Family" likely doesn't have any parts or pieces of whatever was left. If Ryan or anyone else thinks there's a WHOLE car somewhere that is THE car (Little Bastard) in which JD was killed, they need to investigate it thorougly, started with provenance of ownership chain, police reports, insurance company reports (my recollection is that they didn't pay or resisted paying because he was using it in competition events). This accident was horrific, and that little Porsche was pretty well smashed up. George Barris has been snorting Bondo Dust on purpose if he's saying he ever had ANYTHING to do with that car - he did not.

A healthy bit of skepticism is always your ally in these matters. Speaking of which, the "skeptoid.com" has a pod cast on this very subject. Listen to it before you fly off to "secret locationville".

dj

 

I am curious and not real educated on this topic but, what is the connection between Dean's car and Altus, Ok?

 

he's saying thats where the car currently resides. would tend to believe Ryan. he's a pretty reputable source but at the same time i won't believe it until i see it. It would be nice if the car would beput in a museum somewhere for all tovisit and witness. James Dean was THE idol of his time and he unfortunately lived his life in the fast lane. If its been preserved and survived this long;then it should be put somewhere where it will be ensured to continue to survive.

 

since ryan doesnt elaborate on the condition of the remains or complete car that he saw maybe i can add to the confusion james dean owned 2 porsches it was the second car that that was in the crash the first car did not have the beans that the newer car had dean had traded up for what some people was a team car this information came to me directly from the former owner of the performance sports car shop (independent) that all the big hitters in the greater L.A. area used at that time. the gentleman did not voulenteer the information it came about during a disscusssion of so called jinx or haunted cars as an aside he also had the same pictures, prints from the original negs possibly, and stated that the change while being dis played was repeatedly being strapped down because one of the incidents that led to part of the haunted stories was caused by the car partialy collapsing and slipping off of the trailer due to damage from the wreck and improper chaining. after this they apparently boomed the heck out of it .and in the proscess flattened it. he also said that a james dean car was somewhere in Ok. but did not elaborate. I believe Ryan and have no reason not to, but i believe that the car should remain as is where is until such a time as it is quietly recycled into beer cans hey remember the man for what he was and did not some piece of mutilated junk.

 

A prime example of why threads should auto-lock after 6 months of inactivity, except possibly for tech threads.

 

Yep, there was another Porsche.

But nobody will confuse it with a 550 Spyder...

 

There are many stories about where the porsche is now. I did a lot of research, talked to Dean's relatives and two "experts" on Dean's life. The car was on the show circuit for a long time avocating safe driving. Some parts were taken off the vehicle at the shows so the owner of the car stopped showing it around 1978. There were many factors that I took into consideration and the lack of documentation that led me to the conclusion that George Barris still owns the vehicle and is being stored in one of his many warehouses. Yes, I am a licensed Private Investigator.

 

I'm about to watch Giant again to remind myself if he was that great of a fucking actor.

 

Rich, you gotta start leaving the garage door open when you do tune-ups...

 

Fuck yes! But I wear kevlar. Teddy should have drove a Volkswagen Beetle, they supposedly float?

 

Interesting thread and old as hell. I for one have never seen the pictures posted of the actual wreck site with the car and thanks for posting it. I saw all od Deans movies and he had a lot of talent. We lodt a good guy when he was killed and thats a sad thing.

 

The old public service announcement James Dean did shortly before he died,tragically not heading his own advice. HRP

<iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hU5N2SrEaZI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Didnt Karl and Veda Orr tune the car for Dean? I find it hard to believe that after all these years no photos exist of the car past the tour that the car took and supposedly came up missing from. It is a bit off putting that people are fascinated by his death, but it is understandable why. If it was just some nameless rich A-hole who crashed a Porsche no one would care. But it wasnt, it was a man who was literally larger than life,upon losing his life people became fascinated in his death and all things surrounding it. Some of you say it should stay out of sight out of respect for his death,and some of you say let the world see it out of respect for his life.

If given the opportunity to actually see the car for ones self I doubt most hotrodders could say no.

 

I guess i'd fall in line with those who would want to see it as well. I envy Ryan for seeing the reg and car in person..
But i also went to Fairmount In years ago to see the homestead and even took a pic of his Triumph in the museum so it's not just the car, or his death.
Just like some day i want to make it to the crash site in Clear Lake of Buddy, Ritchie and the Big Bopper too.
But i've been told i'm strange so..........

 

You mean this isn't the real deal?!?



Funny thing, 4 of the people who recently posted on this resurrected thread are on my 'ignore' list.

 

I agree. Dean's extremely low to the ground dull gray Porsche driving toward that intersection could easily have been overlooked by Your Grandpa (Mr. Turnupseed). A slight dip in the road that Dean could have been in, at the exact time Turnupseed glanced to check if the road was clear is completely possible. I have been on that road many times, (as my sister lives in Paso Robles) and that dry gold landscape does play with sun glare. Especially if the sun is in your eyes.

Just my 2 cents.

 

I was just trying to understand if there is a connection between the Dean family and "someone" in Altus, Ok. I agree, what Ryan has said sounds very much factual. It just seems strange to me that this car would be locked away like a hermit and kept a total secret to the world for all this time. I could understand this better if the current owner is/was somehow related to the Dean family. Otherwise, why would anyone keep it all such a secret for so many years and remain such a mystery? Just curious

 

did george barris put tailfins on the porsche ? that would have been cool