On September 30th, 1955, James Byron Dean was killed in a car accident near Cholame, California. He was on his way to the Salinas Road Races and was traveling with his Porsche mechanic, Rolf Wütherich, along California Route 466 towards Paso Robles, with Bill Hickman, a stuntman and a friend of Dean, and Sanford Roth, a photographer for Collier’s Magazine in Dean’s Ford Country Squire tailing along. Just after five in the afternoon, at the intersection of CA Route 466 and CA Route 41, Dean’s Porsche, speeding along, met Donald Turnipseed’s 1950 Ford Tudor as Turnipseed was making the left turn onto 41, heading towards Fresno. There wasn’t enough time for either driver to react – Dean’s Porsche met the Ford nearly head-on at over eighty miles an hour and was sent cartwheeling, while the Ford was shoved 39 feet down the westbound lane of 466. Dean died en route to the hospital.

For decades since, the legend of a Hollywood actor who had died so young has lingered, peppered with truths, outright falsehoods, and a persistent rumor that the remains of the “Little Bastard” Porsche were haunted. It is true that one man died in an accident that is connected to the ill-fated Spyder, but is it true about the others? What happened to the car itself, which went missing sometime around 1960? And how is George Barris connected to all of this story? Regular Car Reviews’ “The Roman” takes a highly detailed look back at the man, the car, and the legend. Check it out below!