On 30 September 1955, James Dean was killed when his new Porsche Spyder and another car collided near Cholame, California.

The car has a story of its own. It was cursed, the story goes. After the crash, the wreck and its parts brought disaster to whoever touched them. A doctor killed racing with its parts. A mechanic’s legs broken. A fire that burned everything but the Porsche. A truck driver killed when the wreck fell on him. And in 1960, the car itself vanished.

Some of the most-watched videos about the car, with millions of views, tell these as events that happened. They name no source.

So we looked for the sources. For each part of the story: who told it, and when is the earliest telling we can find? And what did the papers say at the time?

The earliest “jinx” we found came from a race track, a year after the crash. The longer list of misfortunes, we found only in the 1970s. And Alec Guinness’s famous warning to Dean is not in the earliest account of their meeting that we found.

The last drive

Dean began racing a Porsche Speedster in March 1955. By early September a local sports-car column listed him among drivers in Porsche Spyders.

He had only just taken delivery of the Spyder. The 1955 papers we searched give its price as $7,000, but not the date he bought it.

The car is often called “Little Bastard.” We found no 1955 or 1956 report that uses the nickname. The earliest telling we found is from 1979; Barris’s 1974 book, which we could not see, may be earlier.

On 30 September, Dean had planned to tow the car to the races at Salinas. Instead, the photographer Sanford Roth told United Press, Dean drove it, with his mechanic, Rolf Wütherich, beside him. Roth and another friend followed with the trailer.

Less than two hours before the crash, the Highway Patrol said, Dean was ticketed south of Bakersfield for 65 in a 45 zone.

The papers gave the time of the crash as about half past five, just before sunset. According to the Highway Patrol, as the wires reported it the next day, a car turning left from Highway 466 onto Highway 41 and Dean’s Porsche collided almost head-on.

Dean was killed. His mechanic survived with a broken leg and jaw. The other driver, a 23-year-old student, was slightly hurt and was not cited at the scene. He told his hometown paper the next day: “I looked but didn’t see him coming.”

On 11 October a coroner’s jury at Paso Robles returned a verdict of accidental death with no criminal negligence. We found no record that anyone was charged.

Days after his death, ABC dropped a filmed interview in which Dean talked about highway driving. A network spokesman said it “would have been in macabre taste,” United Press reported.

That week a columnist called the Porsche “the death car.” But in the 1955 papers we searched, nobody called it jinxed or cursed.

Pomona

What happened to the wreck? In 1956 a Burbank surgeon, Dr. William Eschrich, said he had bought it from a salvage company for $1,000. By the spring of 1956, a Los Angeles racing paper reported, Dean’s engine was going into Eschrich’s Lotus.

On Sunday, 21 October 1956, at the Pomona road races, a Los Angeles surgeon, Dr. Troy McHenry, was killed racing his own Porsche Spyder. Why his car left the track was reported differently at the time: mechanical trouble in one account, a possible heart attack in another. None of the next day’s reports we found mentions Dean.

Eschrich drove Dean’s engine in the same race. He spun out, and was not hurt. He had won his race the day before. He said he had lent McHenry parts from Dean’s car, and that McHenry was using its rear swing arms when he crashed. Dean’s engine was in Eschrich’s own car.

At the same Pomona meeting a policeman was badly hurt by a wheel that came off another driver’s car, the wire reported at the time. A 1986 book puts the wheel on the car with Dean’s engine.

Three days after Pomona, a wire story ran under the headline “James Dean ‘Car Jinx’ Discounted in Race Death.” It is the earliest “jinx” we found for the car. Asked if he was superstitious, Eschrich said: “Not a bit.”

Within a week, United Press reported that Dean’s fans were saying “jinx.” Eschrich called “all this superstitious reaction” “a lot of baloney.” By the end of October a local sports column, “The Haunting Jinx,” was waiting to see what would happen to the next driver to race a part of Dean’s car.

In February 1957 a fan magazine asked: “Was Jimmy Dean’s sports car jinxed?” It said the doctor with the engine was “seriously injured.” The papers of October 1956 had said he was not hurt.

The man with the wreck

The wreck went on show. The earliest dated showing we found is December 1956, at a Hollywood motor show where the National Safety Council billed it as the car Dean was killed in. A wreck billed as Dean’s car was still being shown at car shows in 1959.

The earliest item we found that names George Barris with the wreck is from March 1957. A Sacramento Union columnist wrote that Barris rented the wreck to car-show promoters, and quoted him: “It’s a gimmick for the promoters. It is an attraction for the morbidly curious but it also has been exploited in safety campaigns.”

That item says nothing about a curse. And the “jinx” talk was already in print in 1956, before the earliest record we found of Barris with the car.

Who owned the wreck, and when, is disputed. In 1956 the doctor who owned Dean’s engine said he had bought the wreck from a salvage company. Books from 1979 on say Barris bought it for $2,500. We found no record from the time of a sale to Barris.

In 1974 a Dean biography told the Pomona story with no curse and no mention of Barris.

That same year Barris published a book with Jack Scagnetti, Cars of the Stars. We have not seen it. A 1999 book reprints a passage credited to it, in which Barris writes: “The only answer seems to be that the car was cursed.”

In 1979 a book called Haunted Houses, built on an interview with Barris, quoted him: “After that race I knew the car carried a curse.” His version moves the race date, and has the doctor with Dean’s parts “seriously injured.” The book goes on to list a fire, a broken hip, a truck driver killed and a vanishing. It tells these in the authors’ own words.

For most of the incidents in the curse story, we found no report from the time they are said to have happened, in the newspapers we could search.

A truck driver named in 1979 as killed by the wreck has not been traced by the researchers we read, and we found no record of him or of the accident. His name is spelled at least four ways in the books and articles we read.

Later tellings say a fire destroyed everything but Dean’s car. Reports from 1959, as later quoted by researchers, say only that the car itself was damaged. We have not seen those reports.

That is not proof that these things did not happen.

Lee Raskin, who has researched the car for years, is quoted in a 2012 book saying that the only part of the curse that can be proven is Dr. McHenry’s death.

The warning

One part of the story has its own trail: the warning from Alec Guinness.

Three days after the crash, Louella Parsons reported Guinness’s memory of meeting Dean. Dean showed him “the Porsche, the death car, that all of his friends begged him not to buy.” In her column, Guinness gives no warning of his own.

The earliest printed telling of a warning by Guinness that we found is in a 1975 biography, nearly twenty years after the crash: “If you do, you will be dead in a week.”

In a 1977 BBC interview Guinness told the story himself: “by 10 o’clock at night next Thursday, you’ll be dead if you get into that car.” He said Dean “was dead the following Thursday afternoon.” Dean died on a Friday.

A 1979 book gives Guinness’s warning in different words: “If you’re smart, you’ll get rid of that car.”

In his 1985 memoir he dated the dinner Friday, 23 September 1955, and wrote that he told Dean: “If you get in that car you will be found dead in it by this time next week.”

In a 2018 television documentary, a witness the program presents as Dean’s friend Lew Bracker recalls that Dean ran after Guinness, brought him back to their table and insisted on showing him the new car next door. In that program, the warning is told by the narrator, not by the witness.

Retellings since 2020 say Guinness wrote his warning in a diary. The words they quote are from the memoir.

Vanished

And the car itself? Warren Beath wrote in 1986 that the only certain fact was that the car vanished from public view in 1960.

Accounts of how the car vanished changed over the years: a train in Barris’s 1974 book, as later summarized; a truck; Florida in 1958; New York in a 2011 interview.

Separately, papers posted online in 2024, said to come from Barris’s files, include a March 1960 bill of lading for “wrecked auto parts” to go by truck from a Tampa car show to a Tucson fairground, in care of Barris. It does not name Dean and has no receiver’s signature. Letters posted with it refer to Dean’s car. We have not been able to check the originals, and they do not show what happened to the car.

The hunt goes on: a $1 million reward in 2005, a hidden-car claim in 2015, and a gearbox said to be from the car sold for $382,000 in 2021.

What the record shows

The crash and the verdict are in the papers of their time. So is the death of Dr. Troy McHenry at Pomona, in his own car.

In March 1957 a columnist wrote that Barris was renting the wreck to car-show promoters, and quoted him on it: “It’s a gimmick for the promoters.”

The longer list of misfortunes is earliest found in Barris’s 1974 book, which we know only at second hand, and, with names and dates, in a 1979 book built on an interview with him. For most of those incidents we found no report from their time. That is not proof that they did not happen.

Guinness’s warning is not in his 1955 account as Louella Parsons reported it. The earliest telling with a warning that we found is from 1975.

And the earliest “jinx” we found? It was printed three days after Pomona, in a wire story that quoted the doctor driving Dean’s engine. He was not hurt. Asked if he was superstitious, he said: “Not a bit.”

Evidence limits

This account checks who told each part of the curse story, and when, against the record of the time. It is not a full account of the crash, and it does not assign fault: the coroner’s verdict is the limit. It does not judge anyone’s motives. “Earliest found” and “we found no record” mean in the sources we could search: the California Digital Newspaper Collection, Internet Archive newspapers and full text (including every MotoRacing issue on the Internet Archive), Chronicling America, fultonhistory, and 88 fan and trade magazine volumes from October 1955 to November 1956. Not all papers could be searched. The Los Angeles Examiner and Herald-Express, the Fresno Bee, the 1956 Pomona Progress-Bulletin, several Central Coast papers of 1955, and the scandal magazines of 1956 were out of reach. A HathiTrust search of the 1956 volume of the fan magazine Motion Picture found no page with “jinx” or “cursed” with “Dean”. We have not seen Barris’s 1974 book; its passage is quoted from a 1999 reprint, and its account of the car’s disappearance is quoted as later summarized. The 1959 reports of the fire are known to us only as later quoted. The 2024 documents were seen only as posted online. The 1977 BBC interview was heard through a re-post of the broadcast; its words are quoted as text. The 2018 documentary’s witness is described as the program presents him. Book passages were read in Internet Archive lending copies. The other driver is not named here; his only interview we found is quoted. The video shows no crash or wreck photographs, no film clips, film frames or trailer frames, and modern Porsche 550s in it are labelled as other cars.

Sources

1955

1956 to 1960

Books

Broadcasts, articles and posts since 1977

Videos shown in the film as dated still screenshots (captured 14 Oct 2026)

The video’s narration uses a synthetic channel voice. No AI-generated pictures are used. No film clips, film frames or trailer frames are used. Newspaper quotations from the California Digital Newspaper Collection are set as text, not shown as pages. The web videos appear as still screenshots, for commentary; no clips or audio are used. Picture credits are listed in the video description.

Corrections

Hollywood Case File separates documented claims from reported accounts. If you know of an earlier printing of any part of the story, with a date and a publication, or a primary record that changes or clarifies this account, use the site’s corrections and contact route. A published correction should identify what changed, why it changed, the date, and the supporting evidence.