Laura Wright 
Hollyweird
Some automobiles become famous because of their beauty, speed, or rarity.
James Dean’s 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder became famous for something much darker.
Dean nicknamed the silver sports car “Little Bastard.” On September 30, 1955, he was driving it to a race when he was involved in a fatal collision.
That should have been the end of the car’s story.
Instead, according to legend, people who came into contact with the wreckage continued to suffer accidents, injuries, and death. Parts salvaged from the Porsche were installed in other racing cars, one of which was involved in a fatal crash. The wreckage supposedly injured spectators, survived a mysterious fire, caused transportation accidents, and finally disappeared without a trace.
Over the decades, Little Bastard became one of the most famous supposedly cursed automobiles in history.
But separating the documented history of James Dean’s Porsche from the legend that grew around it is not always easy.
James Dean and His Love of Racing
James Dean became one of Hollywood’s great cultural icons despite an extraordinarily short film career.
His image became closely associated with youthful rebellion, particularly after Rebel Without a Cause. Success brought Dean enough money to indulge one of his greatest interests: automobiles.
He didn’t simply collect them.
Dean raced.
Eventually, he purchased the automobile that would become forever associated with his death: a silver 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder.
Only a small number of the lightweight racing cars were produced, making the Spyder unusual even before Dean climbed behind the wheel.
His particular Porsche would soon become legendary.
The Arrival of Little Bastard
According to the story, some of Dean’s friends disliked the Porsche almost immediately.
Automotive customizer George Barris later described the vehicle as producing strange feelings of impending doom.
Actors Nick Adams, Ursula Andress, and Eartha Kitt were also said to have disliked the car without being able to explain precisely why.
Maila Nurmi, better known as Vampira, supposedly reacted particularly strongly. She was horrified by the Porsche and reportedly begged Dean to get rid of it.
Dean didn’t.
Instead, the car acquired its infamous nickname.
Little Bastard.
A Warning From Alec Guinness
One of the most famous stories surrounding Little Bastard involves actor Alec Guinness.
Dean encountered Guinness shortly after purchasing the Porsche and proudly showed him the new car.
Guinness reportedly experienced an immediate and inexplicable feeling that something was terribly wrong. He warned Dean against driving it.
The story became especially eerie because Guinness supposedly told Dean that if he got into the Porsche, he would be dead within a week.
The prediction was frighteningly close.
September 30, 1955
On September 30, Dean was traveling to a racing event in California.
He was driving Little Bastard.
At an intersection near Cholame, California, Dean’s Porsche collided with another vehicle.
The lightweight Spyder was catastrophically damaged.
Dean was only 24 years old.
He did not survive.
His passenger, mechanic Rolf Wütherich, was badly injured but lived.
The death of one of Hollywood’s fastest-rising stars immediately became international news.
And almost as quickly, stories began accumulating around the twisted remains of his Porsche.
The Curse Begins
According to the legend, Little Bastard caused another injury almost immediately after Dean’s death.
The wreckage was being unloaded at a garage when it supposedly slipped and fell onto a mechanic, breaking his leg.
By itself, an accident involving the mangled remains of a racing car would hardly be remarkable.
But then parts from the Spyder began finding their way into other cars.
And more accidents followed.
Dr. William Eschrich Buys the Wreckage
Dr. William F. Eschrich purchased the remains of Little Bastard from the insurance company for approximately $1,000.
Eschrich was a physician, but he was also involved in automobile racing.
He believed the wreckage was a bargain. Individual parts from the Porsche could potentially be worth considerably more than he had paid for the entire vehicle.
Eschrich salvaged components from the Spyder for use in racing cars.
His friend and fellow physician, Dr. Troy McHenry, did the same.
Then both men entered the same racing competition.
Death on the Racetrack
In October 1956, a little more than a year after James Dean’s death, Eschrich and McHenry were racing at an event in California.
Both cars contained components associated with Dean’s Porsche.
McHenry lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a tree.
He was killed.
Eschrich also crashed, rolling his car on a curve. He survived but suffered serious injuries.
The crashes involving McHenry and Eschrich, as well as their use of components from Dean’s Porsche, became some of the strongest pieces of evidence cited by believers in the Little Bastard curse.
The Tires Bring More Trouble
The Porsche’s tires supposedly found another owner.
According to the legend, the purchaser returned them only a week later.
Both tires had blown at the same time, sending his vehicle into a ditch.
More pieces of Little Bastard were finding their way into the world.
And seemingly wherever they went, another story of misfortune followed.
Souvenir Hunters Are Injured
James Dean’s death created enormous public fascination, and the wreckage of his Porsche became a macabre celebrity artifact.
Souvenir hunters reportedly attempted to steal pieces of the vehicle.
Two were said to have been injured.
One reached into the mangled interior and caught his arm on a protruding piece of metal. The resulting wound was severe enough to require hospital treatment.
Whether the Porsche was cursed or simply a wreck filled with dangerously twisted metal is another question.
By then, however, Little Bastard had acquired a reputation.
Every new accident added another chapter.
Little Bastard Goes on Tour
Eventually, the wreckage became part of a public safety campaign.
The mangled Porsche was exhibited to demonstrate the consequences of dangerous driving and automobile accidents.
It was displayed as early as December 1956 in connection with a safety exhibition at the Los Angeles International Motor Sports Show.
The remains of the car then traveled to other exhibitions.
According to legend, the curse traveled with them.
The Mysterious Garage Fire
While the Porsche was being stored in Fresno, California, the garage containing it supposedly caught fire.
The building and equipment inside were badly damaged.
Little Bastard survived.
According to the story, the already wrecked Porsche suffered little more than minor additional damage to its paint.
The automobile that had been destroyed in a fatal highway collision had somehow survived another destructive event.
Then came another accident.
A Student Is Injured
During an exhibition at a high school, the Porsche was reportedly secured as part of the display.
Something failed.
The bolts holding the wreckage supposedly broke, causing part of the display to fall onto a student.
Accounts disagree about the injuries.
One version says the student suffered a broken leg.
Another claims the student’s hip was crushed.
The contradictions are significant because many of the incidents surrounding Little Bastard have been repeated and altered over decades.
The legend was growing.
Death During Transportation
One of the darkest stories involves a truck transporting the wreckage.
According to the legend, the driver lost control.
He was thrown from the truck but initially survived.
Then the Porsche came loose from the trailer.
The wreckage fell onto him and crushed him to death.
It is precisely the sort of story that made Little Bastard sound less like the remains of an automobile and more like something actively malevolent.
But the strangest part of the story was still ahead.
Little Bastard disappeared.
The Vanishing Porsche
In 1960, the remaining wreckage was supposedly being returned from Miami, Florida, to Los Angeles.
Little Bastard was packed for transportation by rail.
But when the shipment reached its destination, something was wrong.
The Porsche was gone.
The legendary wreckage had apparently vanished somewhere between Miami and Los Angeles.
No definitive explanation for its disappearance emerged.
One possibility is considerably less supernatural than the legend suggests.
The wreckage may simply have been scrapped.
But considering the rarity of the Porsche and its connection to James Dean, deliberately destroying it seems extraordinary.
Other stories claim that someone had finally become convinced the car was cursed and disposed of it deliberately.
One particularly dramatic variation claims the wreckage was sent to the bottom of the Atlantic.
Whatever happened, Little Bastard has never conclusively resurfaced.
How Much of the Curse Is True?
This is where the Little Bastard story becomes particularly interesting.
Some events associated with the Porsche have historical foundations.
James Dean unquestionably died while driving the Spyder.
The wreckage really was salvaged.
Drs. Eschrich and McHenry really were connected with components from the Porsche, and both were subsequently involved in racing accidents, one of them fatal.
The wreckage really was used for safety exhibitions.
Other elements are much more difficult to establish.
Stories about simultaneous tire blowouts, injured souvenir hunters, fires, crushed students, transportation deaths, and ominous warnings have been repeated so often that later versions can be difficult to trace back to contemporary documentation.
And one man played an enormous role in telling the story.
George Barris and the Legend
Automotive customizer George Barris became closely associated with the history of Little Bastard.
Many of the most famous stories concerning the car’s curse were repeated or popularized through Barris.
That doesn’t automatically make them false.
But it does mean that the history of the Porsche and the folklore surrounding it became intertwined very early.
James Dean was already a cultural icon.
His death was sudden and violent.
The automobile involved was rare, beautiful, and dramatically destroyed.
Its remains were displayed publicly.
Those ingredients almost demanded a legend.
Every later accident involving a component, owner, exhibition, or transporter could be interpreted as evidence that something remained wrong with the car.
Was Christine Inspired by Little Bastard?
Another persistent claim connects James Dean’s Porsche with Stephen King’s novel Christine.
King’s 1983 novel concerns a 1958 Plymouth Fury possessing a sinister supernatural influence over its owner.
The resemblance is easy to see.
Both stories involve automobiles believed to possess something evil.
But the similarities are broad, and the idea of cursed or haunted objects existed long before either Little Bastard or Christine.
There is no need for a direct connection for the comparison to work.
Little Bastard had already become the real world’s version of a haunted automobile.
The Strange Death of Tom Pittman
Another tragedy sometimes mentioned alongside the Little Bastard legend did not involve Dean’s actual car.
Actor Tom Pittman was a promising young performer in Hollywood during the late 1950s. Like Dean, Pittman cultivated a youthful, rebellious image.
On Halloween night in 1958, Pittman left a party.
Then he disappeared.
His family reported him missing.
On November 19, authorities searching the Hollywood Hills discovered Pittman’s body at the bottom of a ravine.
His car had plunged approximately 150 feet.
Pittman had been dead for some time.
Adding to the eerie resemblance to Dean, Pittman was also driving a Porsche Spyder.
The automobile was not Little Bastard, and Pittman’s death provides no evidence that Dean’s car was cursed.
But once the Little Bastard legend existed, the coincidence was almost impossible for storytellers to ignore.
A Curse Built From Coincidence?
There is another way to look at the story.
Racing was dangerous.
Porsche Spyders were high-performance automobiles.
Parts salvaged from a wrecked racing car were likely to be purchased by people involved in racing.
A mangled automobile displayed at schools and public events contained sharp metal and heavy components capable of causing injury.
Transporting wreckage involved ordinary mechanical risks.
Seen individually, many of the supposed curse incidents become less mysterious.
Seen together, they form an extraordinary story.
And that’s often how legends work.
Coincidences that would mean little separately begin to look ominous when arranged into a pattern.
What Happened to Little Bastard?
That may be the most compelling mystery.
The car’s disappearance prevents the story from having a satisfying historical ending.
If Little Bastard were sitting in a museum today, its mythology would be easier to contain.
Instead, the wreckage simply disappears from the story.
Was it scrapped?
Stolen?
Hidden by a collector?
Destroyed because someone believed the curse?
Or does some portion of James Dean’s Porsche still exist, unidentified in a private collection or forgotten storage facility?
Until the wreckage is conclusively located, the final chapter remains unwritten.
Was James Dean’s Porsche Cursed?
There is no evidence that an automobile can carry a supernatural curse.
But Little Bastard had almost everything necessary to create the perfect cursed-object legend.
A famous young owner died violently.
Friends supposedly warned him beforehand.
Parts from the wreckage were connected with later accidents.
One racer died.
Others were injured.
The wreckage became a traveling spectacle.
More accidents accumulated around it.
Then the car vanished.
Nearly seventy years after James Dean’s death, people still argue about what happened to Little Bastard.
Perhaps it was only a car.
Perhaps decades of repetition transformed ordinary accidents and coincidences into something much darker.
But somewhere between Hollywood history and American folklore, James Dean’s silver Porsche stopped being merely the automobile in which a movie star died.
It became Little Bastard.
And then it disappeared.
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