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Remembering James Dean: The Actor Who Drove Flat-Out · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts,
• 0:04
  but we've expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we
• 0:08
  want to share our stories with you.
• 0:10
  Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings
• 0:13
  together a top notch collection of knowledge and information
• 0:17
  through our podcast, Brake Fix.
• 0:22
  There are so many men and women that we have lost over the years.
• 0:26
  Ayrton Senna, Dale Earnhardt, Jim Clark, Peter Brock, John Lingenfelter.
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  The list continues.
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  Many other motorsports organizations have written and will continue to
• 0:37
  write about those heroes every day.
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  But on this episode of Brake Fix, we are choosing to explore the
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  life of someone lesser known for his motorsports accomplishments
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  and more for his acting and the tragic story surrounding his death.
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  Today, we take a moment to remember the race car driver and actor James Dean.
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  And with us to unpack his story is the world's foremost expert on all
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  things related to James Dean, Mr.
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  Lee Raskin.
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  Welcome to Break Fix, Lee.
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  Hi, Eric.
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  It's a pleasure to see you again.
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  And I'm very excited about talking about My favorite actor racer, James Dean.
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  So before we get started on the James Dean story, I think it's important that we set
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  the stage on you, Lee, the petrolhead.
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  How did you get started down this particular path in motorsports?
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  What drew you to the James Dean story?
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  Was it through Porsches or the Porsche Club of America or was it something else?
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  Well, I think it's a, it's a combination of a lot of things.
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  I first, we've got to do a back flip to Lee Raskin at the age of nine.
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  I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, July 4th of 1953.
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  I asked my father to take me to the first sports car races at Offutt Air Force Base.
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  that were being hosted by none other than General Curtis LeMay.
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  Oh, wow.
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  I don't know.
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  I just fell in love with foreign cars.
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  I was buying, uh, Road Track and Sports Car Illustrated.
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  This was an opportunity to go to see some of these cars that I had read about.
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  It was the first race that they held.
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  And actually, Curtis LeMay was really an advocate of the
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  sports car club of America.
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  And this was his way of getting grassroots racing throughout the country.
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  He was using all the Air Force tarmacs.
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  It was a natural.
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  So I remember it was about a hundred degrees that day.
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  There were no grandstands.
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  We just sort of sat on the hillside behind snow fences,
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  wasn't a real safe environment.
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  Certainly was up close and you could smell the rubber and the castor oil.
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  It was really great.
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  After the race, they had brief ceremonies and my father said to me,
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  he said, go up and get some autographs.
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  I had a program, bought that for 25 cents.
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  And he said, go over to those two guys standing there.
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  They're the ones that finished first and second.
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  And he gave me a ballpoint pen, and it's the first time I ever
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  had a ballpoint pen in my hand.
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  And I went over and I introduced myself, and I got two
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  autographs, first and second.
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  First was a guy, a really young guy, uh, he was just 22 years old
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  from Kansas City, and they referred to him as the Kansas City Flash.
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  His name was Mastin Gregory.
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  Oh wow.
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  And the person that finished second, nose to tail, was this big tall guy
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  wearing bib overalls, and his name was...
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  Carol Shelby.
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  No way.
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  And those are the first two autographs that I collected among thousands,
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  by the way, you know, today.
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  And I still have that.
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  I still have the program.
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  So that was my introduction to sports car racing.
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  And I went back the next year, they held it again on July 4th.
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  It was just as exciting.
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  And by that time I had done a little study.
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  So I knew Porsches and Morgans and Austin Healey's and Ferraris,
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  and I could identify them.
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  And back then you almost could identify them by the sounds.
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  Of course, the Porsches were rear engine and the Austin Healey's
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  were a little bit louder and, uh, they were six cylinder cars.
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  And the Ferraris, they just roared around the track as well as Maseratis.
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  In the third year, 1955.
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  My sister was watching James Dean on black and white television.
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  And of course, we only had one television in the household, as did everybody else.
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  And James Dean was starring on live TV in General Electric Theater, Philco, Schlitz.
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  Both my sister And all her girlfriends were enamored over
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  this great young star, James Dean.
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  Of course, I was 10 years old at the time and I was watching him as well.
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  And then in September, the headline said, actor James Dean killed in car crash.
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  My sister was absolutely devastated.
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  And she created a shrine in her bedroom, floor to ceiling photos of James Dean.
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  And there were two or three photos that I particularly liked.
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  Those were the photos of James Dean and his Porsche Speedster that he was racing.
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  And of course I had seen the Porsches, not the Speedster, but
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  the Coupe back then in 53 and 54.
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  The Speedster was a brand new model that came out in 1955.
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  If I was on my best behavior, she would let me enter her shrine and let me read
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  the articles and look at the photos.
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  I think that's really when it started.
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  And of course, I was 10 years old and by that time I was collecting plastic model
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  cars, Revell and Monogram and Aurora.
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  I would spend my 50 cent allowance a week to buy those cars, and I bought
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  every sports car that came out.
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  And I only wish that I kept them, but unfortunately somewhere
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  along the way I maybe blew them up as a 4th of July celebration.
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  Later on, I got into my bicycle, and of course I put cards on the folks
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  and made noises, and I made noises.
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  Somewhere around the late 50s, there were records that were produced by Riverside
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  Records, and they were sounds of Sebring and Cuban Corners, and there were all
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  these great sounds of sports cars racing.
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  Sebring and you could identify, you could listen to them.
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  And my friend and I would play games with each other, like which car is this?
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  And which car is that?
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  Of course, my favorite was the Porsche at that time.
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  Stayed in touch with what was going on with sports car racing.
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  There wasn't, there wasn't any more racing at Omaha.
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  It was just there for two years, but I was still buying my road and track
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  and sports car illustrated magazines.
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  And then there was sports car graphic.
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  And I learned about the races.
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  The Mille Emilia, the Targa Florio, Le Mans, Sebring.
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  And I liked the endurance races because they weren't over in 25 laps.
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  They went on for hours and hours and you had factory teams.
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  And it's something that is like chewing gum.
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  It stuck with you.
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  You loved it.
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  And you couldn't wait year after year for those races to take place.
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  And I couldn't wait to get the morning paper after a race at Sebring and
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  Le Mans to find out who was winning.
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  When I was 13, I begged my father to let me buy a third hand.
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  I would call it as a mini cycle, but it was called a doodle bug.
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  It was made in Iowa, had a Clinton, two and a half horsepower in in Omaha.
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  You could drive those on the streets.
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  In 1958, my father, my sister and I moved back from Omaha back to where he grew
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  up in Baltimore, and I took my motor scooter with me and of course, The police
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  were always chasing me because it was illegal to drive that on the street.
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  You had to have a license and you had to be 16.
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  At 16, I bought a Yamaha motor scooter, drove it 15 miles each way to school, went
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  to college and took my motorcycle with me.
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  And then after my first year of college, I begged my father
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  to let me buy a used Porsche.
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  That was a pretty big step.
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  It was 1, 500.
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  It was a 1960 Porsche.
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  Coupe, 1964.
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  I bought it, took it to college.
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  I had the very first Porsche on the campus of the University of Alabama.
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  Everybody else was driving Fords and Chevys and trucks, too.
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  I had a Porsche.
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  This would have been a 356 Charlie, right?
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  A C.
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  Yeah, this would have been a B.
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  Right on the borderline.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  And I, and that was the beginning.
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  That was my first Porsche at age 19.
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  The rest is history.
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  I was always trading up.
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  Sometimes I had two Porsches.
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  Sometimes I had three.
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  I've had a lot of models, not every model, but I've had a lot of models
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  and Porsche became my favorite mark.
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  Although, a lot of people know me as racing a Morgan, racing an Arnold Bristol,
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  and racing an Elva Formula Junior, so I guess I'm a multi marked person.
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  Somewhere around 1977, I, uh, was reading stories about James Dean in some of
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  the Porsche magazines, the Porsche Club of America, Panorama, 356 Registry.
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  And I said, you know, that's not what I remember.
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  That's not what I saw.
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  And I saw where a lot of individuals were writing articles about
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  James Dean and they really didn't know what the hell was going on.
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  They had the cars wrong.
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  They had the events wrong.
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  They had his crash wrong.
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  I wrote letters to the editor, you know, and I tried to straighten things out.
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  And then a lot of my friends said, you know, Lee, you should
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  be writing these articles.
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  And that's, When things started to happen for me, not only did I write
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  articles, I decided to write books.
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  That's been my life since 2004.
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  I haven't stopped.
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  I always thought James Dean would be like, you know, a fleeting
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  moment in my life, but it isn't.
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  I realized that I emulated him.
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  I grew up in a very similar fashion of James Dean.
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  I lost my mother when I was 10.
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  He lost his mother when he was nine.
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  I had a little motor scooter that I drove to school.
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  So did he.
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  I had a Porsche when I was 19.
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  He waited a little longer until he was...
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  And then I got involved in racing.
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  I never thought that I was James Dean behind the wheel, but I always had
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  a lot of respect for what he did.
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  And it wasn't until recently that I realized that James Dean
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  really perpetuated the Porsche in California sports car racing.
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  In his first two races, he was on the podium.
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  So he was really the first.
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  actor, racer in Hollywood to be serious about his newfound sport,
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  and that was automobile racing.
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  And of course, he traded his 356 Speedster in after a year and bought a 550, and
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  he was on his way to his fourth race when unfortunately he had an accident.
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  It was a moment in time that was unguarded for both James Dean
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  and the person that he ran into.
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  At his death on September 30th, 1955, this is when James
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  Dean's legend actually began.
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  And we're going to unpack that as we go through the episode, getting
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  people familiar with the entire story.
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  As I've said many times on this show before, Oftentimes for
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  many of us as petrolheads, it starts with a poster on the wall.
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  And for you, it was photographs of James Dean and his Porsche and things
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  like that, that inspired you to become the petrolhead that you are today.
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  So for those of you that are listening, you know, as we're diving deeper into
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  this, understand that James Dean was an accomplished actor in American heartthrob.
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  His most popular films being East of Eden and rebel without a cause.
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  But many of you that are listening to this might not know that he was an avid motor
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  sports enthusiast and amateur race car.
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  driver.
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  So Lee, without dragging this out further, let's begin right
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  there with his racing career and expand on his motor sports past.
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  So where did that begin for James Dean?
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  James Dean really got his motor sports start on two wheels.
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  And when he was just barely a teenager, He had a little whizzer motorbike.
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  He took a Schwinn bike and they took a whizzer, which was a small three or four
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  horsepower engine, and they put it on the bicycle and he drove the hell out of that.
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  I mean, he just drove it as fast as he could, everywhere he could.
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  Everybody heard him because it was loud.
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  It was unmuffled.
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  He graduated to a little a 125 CZ, a Czechoslovakian motorcycle,
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  which incidentally has been preserved and it's in the Fairmont
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  Museum in Fairmont, Indiana.
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  And he drove that to school and he got the reputation and the nickname,
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  they called him One Speed Dean.
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  And that was, he, he drove that wide out.
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  As a matter of fact, he was a bit of a daredevil in order to be a little
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  more aerodynamic on his motorcycle.
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  He would lay prone.
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  He'd be holding the handlebars with his feet out the back.
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  He would try and get it past 40, 45 miles an hour, which was the top speed.
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  James Dean graduated into, uh, some larger motorcycles.
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  When he left Fairmont, Indiana, after graduating high school, he
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  went to California to, uh, live with his father in Santa Monica.
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  Then he moved on to New York.
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  He had a Royal Enfield 500cc, and then he bought an Indian TT, which
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  was a really neat motorcycle.
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  I guess it was probably a 1952 or 53 that he had in New York.
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  And it's interesting, as he needed some service on the motorcycle in New York, he
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  went to a motorcycle shop in the village.
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  He became good friends with the mechanic.
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  He also was a starving actor, and his name was...
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  Steve McQueen.
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  So James Dean met Steve McQueen and vice versa, and they
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  shared their love for bikes.
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  It's interesting that Steve McQueen had an MGTC in New York City, and James Dean
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  admired that, but didn't have any money, so he was still on a You know, his two
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  wheel Indian as he was discovered by Ili Kazan in 1954 to start a co star in East
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  of Eden playing the role of Cal Trask.
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  He left his Indian bike in New York, came to California, immediately had some money
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  in his pocket and bought a used MGTD.
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  His best friend said to Jimmy, you know, I don't see what
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  you, you'd like about this car.
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  It's awfully loud and it doesn't go very fast.
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  And, uh, Jimmy must've listened to him because he traded up, he traded the
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  MG for a brand new 1955 Porsche Super.
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  356 Speedster.
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  Is there any backstory to how he went from English Roadster to Porsche?
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  Because have they established their foothold yet, especially in America?
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  Were they still considered a boutique manufacturer at that point?
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  What drew him into the brand?
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  I mean, you had so many other things to choose from in those early 1950s.
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  That's an excellent question.
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  The MG was very popular as well as Austin Healey's Triumphs.
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  They were cheap cars, they sold new for around 2, 200, 2, 300, some less, 1, 800.
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  The Porsche Speedster was the brainchild of Max Hoffman, who
• 15:19
  became the largest Porsche importer and dealer in this country.
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  And Hoffman was the one that said to Dr.
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  Porsche, we need to create a car under 3, 000 to compete against
• 15:34
  the British cars, not only on the street, but on the racetrack because
• 15:38
  amateur racing through the SCCA.
• 15:40
  Was becoming very popular on the East Coast and the California
• 15:44
  sports car club on the West Coast.
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  So the Speedster was created in 1954 and it sold for 29.
• 15:52
  95, under 3, 000.
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  If it, it sold without a side view mirror.
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  So if you wanted a mirror, it was an extra five or 6 and that took it over 3, 000.
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  So that was their marketing program.
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  Brand new, stripped down Porsche Speedster, fast, light, fun,
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  perfect car for California, on the road, on the racetrack.
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  And James Dean, being in California, had befriended John von Neumann, who owned
• 16:21
  Competition Motors, and he had taken a test drive of a Porsche Speedster.
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  And von Neumann said, look, there's a new car coming out, it'll be a
• 16:30
  super, it'll have a larger engine, and it'll have a three piece crankshaft.
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  Wait a few months, We'll order this car for you.
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  You'll be able to race it and the car came in in February of 1955.
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  Jimmy traded in his MGT D and bought the car for 29.
• 16:49
  95 and immediately within that month took it racing, competed in the novice
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  race at Palm Springs, won the novice race and qualified for the main event
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  in under 1500 cc's, came in third to Ken Miles and Sy Yetter, and Miles of
• 17:07
  all things was disqualified in his race.
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  Bye.
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  flying shingle special because he was using aviation fuel.
• 17:16
  So Cy Yetter, who had, uh, raced Ken Miles first MG special became first
• 17:24
  and James Dean was bumped up to second.
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  And, uh, within two months, for May Day, he raced at Bakersfield in May of 1955,
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  and finished third in the first group, and then ninth in the main event on Sunday.
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  Immediately, with that speedster, he was not only driving on the
• 17:43
  street, But he was racing him.
• 17:45
  And of course in those days, and days following, you could have a race car,
• 17:49
  you could drive it on the street, you could take it racing, and you could
• 17:52
  drive it home, if everything went okay.
• 17:55
  James Dean was busy filming, he had just started Rebel Without a
• 17:59
  Cause after the Palm Springs race.
• 18:02
  In March of 1955 and after Rebel was completed, he got a break and
• 18:08
  he was able to race at Bakersfield.
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  Warner Brothers was not very keen on his racing.
• 18:14
  They thought something could happen to him and he was lined
• 18:17
  up for five or six movies.
• 18:19
  and they didn't want anything to happen.
• 18:21
  They didn't want him to get injured while he was racing.
• 18:24
  James Dean had a pick and choose.
• 18:26
  As soon as the movie was over, he had a few weeks, and if
• 18:29
  there was a race, he was in it.
• 18:30
  So his third race would have been Memorial Day weekend.
• 18:35
  the end of May, and it was a Santa Barbara.
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  He drove his speedster up there.
• 18:39
  He missed practice because he had to do a stage call or costume call for giant.
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  And of course he didn't tell them that he was racing and he wasn't
• 18:49
  able to get up there until Sunday.
• 18:51
  So he hadn't raced in the preliminary on Saturday.
• 18:54
  I suspect if you and I were in that situation, they would say tough luck.
• 18:59
  You weren't here, can't race.
• 19:00
  But James Dean was James Dean and he was a rising star and it was good promotion.
• 19:05
  So they let him race on Sunday and he was racing against some of the
• 19:09
  competition that he had raced against earlier, but also some new names, I
• 19:14
  think that he just got ahead of himself.
• 19:16
  And he qualified further back.
• 19:19
  What's interesting, in those days, you didn't qualify by
• 19:23
  lap time, fastest lap time.
• 19:25
  You sort of put your hand in the hat and you picked a number out.
• 19:29
  So he came up with a, with a bad number.
• 19:32
  He was 18th in the grid.
• 19:34
  So he had never started back that far.
• 19:37
  And I think that he, as I said, got ahead of himself.
• 19:41
  On lap four, lap five, he went wide.
• 19:45
  Hit a bale of hay, over revved his engine, and burned a piston, and
• 19:50
  he was a DNF that did not finish.
• 19:53
  And so, here's James Dean driving his car up, he didn't have a ride home.
• 19:57
  So there are some very famous photographs taken of James Dean and others
• 20:03
  pushing the car up on a transporter.
• 20:05
  So he had a long ride home with his mechanic friend, Bill Tunstall,
• 20:10
  in the cab of a truck with the damaged car on the, on the back.
• 20:14
  And they took that to Competition Motors.
• 20:16
  Within a week or so, he was on his way to Martha, Texas to begin filming Giant.
• 20:22
  So he did not race in June, July, or August because he was busy filming.
• 20:29
  And he lost the edge.
• 20:30
  And he kept saying, you know, I need a faster car.
• 20:34
  This car's not fast enough.
• 20:35
  So he actually had made a deal with a racer by the name of Jay Chamberlain,
• 20:41
  who had a Lotus dealership right outside of Warner Brothers in Burbank.
• 20:46
  And he agreed to purchase a Lotus Mark 9.
• 20:51
  Actually, it might've been an 8 or a 9.
• 20:53
  We're not sure.
• 20:53
  It was in transition.
• 20:55
  He put down a deposit.
• 20:56
  As you know, Lotus was like Morgan.
• 21:00
  They made racing car bodies.
• 21:02
  But they used other engines, so Morgan used a Triumph and the
• 21:06
  Ford and the Lotus used Coventry Climax and also a Crystal engine.
• 21:11
  But James Dean decided he wanted a smaller V8.
• 21:15
  And having grown up in Indiana, close to the Indianapolis 500, he chose to
• 21:20
  use an off the engine, Offenhauser, which was made in Los Angeles.
• 21:25
  He made a deposit for a used Offenhauser.
• 21:28
  Coffee and he was going to put a v8 in there the british car manufacturers.
• 21:33
  They were never in a hurry.
• 21:34
  So he wanted this lotus to be ready for September because he knew it would be
• 21:40
  finished filming giant and he wanted to race at Salinas because that was fairly
• 21:46
  close to Mendocino in terms of having filmed East of Eden in that, in that area.
• 21:53
  It's sort of like going home again.
• 21:55
  He knew that he had a big fan base.
• 21:57
  Any case, the Lotus was not going to be ready, so he canceled the order.
• 22:01
  He had told John von Neumann, I'd like to buy a 550.
• 22:05
  Von Neumann said, well, they're not going to be coming in until September.
• 22:09
  And by the way, you're not really qualified.
• 22:12
  You don't have enough seat time to race a 550.
• 22:15
  Why don't you finish out the season in your super speedster?
• 22:19
  Jimmy was relentless.
• 22:20
  He said, no, I, I want this 550.
• 22:23
  And as it turns out, he got his way because of five that were
• 22:27
  delivered through Hoffman to Von Neumann, someone backed out of
• 22:31
  the deal and a car was available.
• 22:34
  He traded his super speedster in for 3, 000.
• 22:39
  He had to come up with 3, 800.
• 22:41
  He really had a deep pocket because he was making some, you know, some good
• 22:45
  money, uh, having just filmed a giant.
• 22:49
  And so he asked his agent to take, uh, advance 3, 800, came up
• 22:55
  with 6, 800 and the 550 was his.
• 22:58
  And he settled on the car on September 21st, 1955, which would be nine
• 23:05
  days just before the Salinas race.
• 23:08
  Let's put 6, 855 in perspective.
• 23:13
  What does that come out to in today's currency with inflation?
• 23:16
  Well, it probably comes out close to 150, 000.
• 23:20
  They've only made 9550 spiders.
• 23:24
  Most of them were erased.
• 23:26
  About half of them survived.
• 23:28
  And today, like Jerry Seinfeld sold a 550 for several million dollars.
• 23:34
  The auctions today at Amelia Island, they're going to be offering
• 23:39
  550 spiders for four and five million dollars going forward.
• 23:44
  It's a lot of money for a car, but they only made 90.
• 23:47
  So they're fairly rare.
• 23:48
  And most of them have a fairly significant race history in as much as
• 23:53
  some very famous drivers raced 550s.
• 23:57
  At Lamar at Sebring at Watkins Glen and California as well.
• 24:02
  More so than the body and the coachwork itself, the other significant part
• 24:07
  about the five 50 is it was the four cam Porsche motor as the first time it was
• 24:11
  introduced, basically in a production car, considered a production car.
• 24:14
  Yeah.
• 24:16
  The Furman engine was developed specifically for the five 50.
• 24:20
  It was used.
• 24:21
  During 1954 through 1956, then they not only put them into the
• 24:27
  550 race chassis, but they also stuck them into the Carrera Coupes.
• 24:33
  And those cars were very significant in racing as well.
• 24:36
  You know, to find a four cam Porsche 356, that car is
• 24:42
  approaching a million dollars today.
• 24:44
  Uh, in value.
• 24:45
  They were fairly rare.
• 24:46
  The engine is a double overhead cam.
• 24:49
  It was very, very rare.
• 24:51
  Highly engineered.
• 24:52
  Almost a bulletproof engine.
• 24:54
  But you needed a good mechanic.
• 24:55
  You needed someone that was really trained.
• 24:57
  And incidentally, James Dean befriended Rolf Widerich, who was sent over from
• 25:03
  the, uh, factory in Stuttgart to work specifically with Johnny von Neumann
• 25:08
  in developing their racing program.
• 25:11
  So he was the mechanic of choice.
• 25:14
  in Southern California for all the racing cars, the four cam especially,
• 25:19
  but also the cc flat fours.
• 25:23
  Curiosity question.
• 25:24
  There's later four cam engines, for instance, used like in a 904.
• 25:30
  Is that a derivative of the five fifties engine or is it a different engine?
• 25:34
  No, it's a derivative, and it's just an improved engine.
• 25:37
  And the interesting thing about the 904, that was in the line.
• 25:41
  The 550, 550A, RSK, RS60, and 61 were type 718 Porsches.
• 25:49
  that basically were just improved.
• 25:51
  The engineering was improved.
• 25:53
  The aerodynamics were improved.
• 25:54
  The 904 was the first plastic fiberglass Porsche and that was a fixed coupe.
• 26:00
  They also made a few open cars.
• 26:03
  They used the 904 Carrera engine, which is a very similar engine.
• 26:08
  They also put a, um, think an eight cylinder engine and a few of those that
• 26:13
  were raced in endurance races, like the Targa Florio and the Mille Miglia.
• 26:17
  Where did the lineage for that four cam four cylinder stop?
• 26:21
  Was it with the 904?
• 26:22
  Did it continue on at any point?
• 26:24
  I actually stopped at the 904 because the 906 was a six cylinder engine, and then
• 26:28
  they used an eight cylinder for some of the Bergmeister cars, the 908, 909, 910.
• 26:35
  The models didn't hang around very long.
• 26:37
  It was 3 56, 5 50, uh, RS 69 0 4 9 0 6 9 0 8, and then, you know,
• 26:44
  went all the way through nine 17.
• 26:46
  The car that really stuck was the successor to the 3 56, which would be the
• 26:51
  six cylinder nine 11, and then the 9 14 6.
• 26:55
  You know, the nine 11 was created in 1963, and here we are.
• 27:01
  2022, the 911 is still around.
• 27:03
  It's, you know, it's got a long shelf life.
• 27:05
  That's very true.
• 27:06
  Although the original 901s as they, as they were dubbed back then versus a
• 27:12
  992, like today, they are years apart.
• 27:15
  It's like the original Star Trek versus whatever we come up with now.
• 27:19
  Right.
• 27:19
  I mean, they were definitely ahead of their time compared to other offerings
• 27:22
  on the road and other marks and whatnot.
• 27:24
  Lotus was very similar.
• 27:26
  They were changing models constantly.
• 27:28
  And those numbers that follow the Lotus was all the revisions, right?
• 27:32
  The Mark 1, the 2, the 8, the 9, you know, the Super 7s, the 7s, those
• 27:37
  became Caterhams, so on down the line.
• 27:40
  So I find that interesting.
• 27:41
  But switching back to the 550, what you have to realize about this James
• 27:45
  Dean story is it's very compressed.
• 27:48
  Everything happens In just a matter of a couple of years, and especially in that
• 27:53
  last year, it's almost super compressed.
• 27:55
  There's so much going on between the movies between the races between changing
• 27:59
  cars and then inevitably the crash, which we'll talk about here in a little bit.
• 28:02
  It's just, it's almost mind blowing how much was going on
• 28:05
  on almost a day by day basis.
• 28:08
  I do want to touch on one more, like, bit of, I guess,
• 28:10
  trivia that surrounds the 550.
• 28:12
  It's been a long standing ideology in the Volkswagen Audi community that we
• 28:18
  have a tradition of naming our vehicles.
• 28:20
  And a lot of us know that James Dean called his 550 the Little
• 28:24
  Bastard or Little Bastard.
• 28:26
  So why or how did he come up with this particular name for that car?
• 28:31
  Well, there's um, fact and then there's fiction.
• 28:35
  The interesting thing is, I'm constantly battling the fiction.
• 28:40
  It's just a lot of folklore, you know, it's uh, unbelievable.
• 28:44
  A lot of myths about James Dean, about his racing, and then the
• 28:48
  curse of James Dean and the car.
• 28:51
  The Little Bastard is a very unique name.
• 28:54
  When you think about this and you take a step back, James Dean was
• 28:58
  probably the first to put some kind of nickname on his race car.
• 29:04
  Going through the chronology of racing, there were names, specials
• 29:09
  that were built, but James Dean may have been the first to put a name,
• 29:13
  and not only just a name, but a name that was, you know, kind of taboo.
• 29:18
  Little bastard.
• 29:19
  One story has it this way.
• 29:21
  He had befriended an individual who was a stunt driver at Warner Brothers.
• 29:27
  His name was Bill Hickman.
• 29:29
  And actually, Bill Hickman became not only famous because he accompanied James Dean.
• 29:35
  On that fateful day going towards the race at Salinas, but after James Dean's
• 29:41
  death, Bill Hickman became a very famous stunt driver in the French connection
• 29:46
  and even more famous as a stunt driver in bullet driving, driving the Dodge.
• 29:53
  I'm not sure whether it was a charger or challenger.
• 29:57
  Charger that crashed into the gasoline station and blew up.
• 30:02
  That was his claim to fame, Bill Hickman.
• 30:04
  In any case, Bill Hickman kind of, uh, befriended James Dean and he
• 30:09
  called James Dean a little bastard and James Dean called him a big bastard.
• 30:16
  So they had that running commentary back and forth.
• 30:19
  But I actually think the name Little Bastard came from a situation where
• 30:26
  James Dean had just finished making the movie East of Eden, and he was living
• 30:32
  in a trailer on the Warner Brothers set.
• 30:36
  Okay.
• 30:36
  It was convenient.
• 30:37
  There was no rent being charged and it was very comfortable for him, except Warner
• 30:43
  Brothers said, you're done with the movie.
• 30:45
  It's time to move on.
• 30:47
  Jimmy didn't leave the trailer.
• 30:49
  So Stanley Warner said to one of his assistants, I've had enough.
• 30:54
  Get that little bastard off the lot.
• 30:57
  Anyway, James Dean heard about that, sort of tuck it away.
• 31:00
  When he bought the Spider, he wanted to name it.
• 31:03
  He said, I'm going to name this the little bastard and I'm going to
• 31:06
  show Jack Warner who's out front.
• 31:09
  And in addition to that, all the drivers behind me are going to know that the
• 31:13
  little bastard is winning the race.
• 31:15
  Oh, nice.
• 31:16
  So I think that was it.
• 31:17
  The Little Bastard, as we know it, was in a fancy script, the tale of his 550.
• 31:24
  Most people thought that George Barris, the car customizer, painted it on.
• 31:31
  Because George Barris said, I painted the Little Bastard on there, as
• 31:34
  well as the 130 and the pinstripes.
• 31:37
  It's not true.
• 31:38
  The person that painted it on was the other customizer
• 31:41
  by the name of Dean Jeffries.
• 31:43
  And Dean Jeffries told me personally in 2004, you know, I'm really tired of
• 31:49
  George Barris taking credit for this.
• 31:52
  Yes, we had shops next to each other near Compton, but I painted it.
• 31:56
  James Dean came to me.
• 31:58
  He was an artist himself and he had doodled the little bastard
• 32:02
  on the tail of a 550 and said, I want you to paint this on.
• 32:07
  By the way, my provisional numbers for the race are 130.
• 32:11
  So he painted the little bastard in permanent gloss black.
• 32:15
  Dean Jeffrey said it was called one shot black.
• 32:18
  And then the numbers were painted on in a washable black because
• 32:22
  it was a provisional number.
• 32:24
  The car was silver with red tail stripes with a two millimeter gold leaf border.
• 32:30
  Were not painted by Dean Jeffrey's or George Barris.
• 32:33
  They came from the factory that way.
• 32:35
  There's a whole story about tail stripes and why Porsche was using those and
• 32:39
  we can talk about that was very unique to James Dean's car number 550 055.
• 32:47
  I've done a lot of research, and I believe that this car originally was
• 32:52
  destined to be part of the factory team of endurance cars, but for
• 32:57
  some reason it wasn't completed.
• 33:00
  Until July, the racing season started much earlier in the spring in Europe,
• 33:05
  and I don't think this car was included.
• 33:07
  And so it was finished up with red tail stripes and sent,
• 33:12
  you know, as a customer's car.
• 33:13
  The tail stripes were used by the Porsche factory to delineate.
• 33:18
  The cars that usually traveled in a packet, say Le Mans, one, two, three.
• 33:23
  They had similar numbers like 32, 33, 34.
• 33:27
  And, and the drivers interchanged some of those cars.
• 33:30
  So it may have been difficult at night, especially at night when the cars came
• 33:34
  through to know who was in what order.
• 33:37
  So they had tail stripes, red, blue, green, yellow.
• 33:42
  They use the colors rather than the numbers to keep score.
• 33:46
  And so that's how the tail stripes were created.
• 33:48
  And Porsche was one of the first to use that.
• 33:50
  I think Alfa Romeo probably used it as well.
• 33:53
  So James Dean's car, silver with red tail stripes, was very unique.
• 33:57
  You would think that maybe a Dean Jeffries, painted the gold leaf,
• 34:02
  but no, it came from the factory.
• 34:04
  So another question about James Dean, before we kind of move on to the tail
• 34:08
  end of his compressed racing career, he's often portrayed as a loner, right?
• 34:15
  You see him, you know, infamous pictures in black and white leaning up against
• 34:18
  the car, cigarette in his mouth, you know, he's got that rockstar appeal.
• 34:22
  Obviously plenty of people tried to emulate him later, you know,
• 34:25
  even so much as to be tongue in cheek, like shows like 90210, right?
• 34:29
  Where they had characters that were basically modeled after him, et cetera.
• 34:33
  You know, he went from nobody to somebody almost overnight.
• 34:36
  Was he really a loner in real life?
• 34:38
  Or is that the way he's depicted, but from the way you've described, he had this
• 34:44
  whole racing family that he was a part of.
• 34:46
  So what was it, loner or petrolhead?
• 34:49
  You know, which was he first?
• 34:50
  I think he was a chameleon.
• 34:52
  I honestly believe, depending on where he was and who he was
• 34:57
  with, it brought out his persona.
• 34:59
  Everybody characterized James Dean as being a rebel, wearing a red jacket.
• 35:05
  Because of Rebel Without a Cause, he played Jim Stark, and he was a, you know,
• 35:10
  tormented teenager trying to find himself.
• 35:14
  a little boy lost, so to speak.
• 35:16
  That's really how he was marketed by Warner Brothers, and I think
• 35:20
  the teenagers gobbled it up.
• 35:21
  They loved it, especially the girls.
• 35:23
  But James Dean was a very compassionate person, and he actually was meek at times.
• 35:29
  Although he could be outspoken, but I think he was outspoken on the set
• 35:32
  because he knew How to market himself.
• 35:35
  One thing that I really noticed was that James Dean at age
• 35:39
  24 knew how to get publicity.
• 35:41
  He always had a photographer with him.
• 35:44
  And not only that, he took the photographers to the races.
• 35:47
  He knew it was good marketing.
• 35:48
  Yeah, I think 90 percent of his photos had a cigarette.
• 35:52
  That was part of his persona.
• 35:53
  But you never saw James Dean off the set in that red jacket.
• 35:57
  That was merely a prop.
• 35:59
  I wouldn't call him fashionable, but he was a pretty cool guy, wore boots,
• 36:04
  he wore jeans, he wore a v neck t shirt when no one else was wearing a v neck.
• 36:08
  I think that he got a big kick out of that.
• 36:11
  And he had a lot of friends.
• 36:12
  He could have been your friend and my friend, and yet we
• 36:15
  wouldn't have known each other.
• 36:17
  And that goes for men as well as women.
• 36:19
  And he had his own set of racer friends, and the racer friends
• 36:23
  didn't know the acting friends.
• 36:24
  He, uh, he had one friend, Lou Bracker, who he got involved in racing, but
• 36:30
  Lou lived in that area, West L.
• 36:33
  A., knew a lot of people, wasn't enamored over Hollywood, but
• 36:37
  became James Dean's good friend.
• 36:39
  and then became a racer.
• 36:41
  And actually after James Dean died, Lou Bracker actually got hold of
• 36:45
  his speedster and raced it for a year and became a really good
• 36:48
  Porsche driver through 1956 and 57.
• 36:51
  I've heard a lot of stories about Dennis Hopper, for example, said,
• 36:55
  Oh yeah, I, I love James Dean.
• 36:57
  We were really best of friends, but I've never seen a photo of Dennis
• 37:01
  Hopper and James Dean together.
• 37:03
  Other than, you know, on the set of Rebel Without a Cause and Giant.
• 37:06
  Dennis may have thought that, and Dennis may have said, you know,
• 37:09
  I was invited to go to the races with Jimmy, but I don't think so.
• 37:13
  I think that if everybody who said they were invited to go to the races, that they
• 37:17
  all got together, they would have needed to rent a bus with all those people.
• 37:21
  You were talking about, you know, early on about your sister.
• 37:24
  You know, kind of fawning over James Dean and he was a
• 37:26
  heartthrob as described, right?
• 37:28
  And so there are a lot of ladies pined for him and he was an object of desire.
• 37:32
  Did he have a lady on his arm or was that sort of interchangeable, just
• 37:36
  like his friends and scenes like his cars too, in this short amount of time?
• 37:39
  Yeah, no, I agree.
• 37:41
  Listen, he died at 24.
• 37:43
  Whoever thinks they're going to die at 24, although everyone says,
• 37:46
  well, James Dean had a death wish.
• 37:48
  No, I disagree.
• 37:49
  He didn't.
• 37:49
  That's just something that got concocted by a lot of writers.
• 37:52
  One of the things that I noticed, and I mentioned earlier, I read
• 37:57
  all these articles and I said, that's not the way it was.
• 37:59
  And so I started interviewing a lot of his friends over the years.
• 38:04
  And I'm lucky that I did because most of them passed on.
• 38:08
  James Dean would be over 90 years old today, born in 1931.
• 38:12
  Most of his friends and acting friends have since passed on.
• 38:15
  But I had the good fortune during the 70s and 80s to have telephone
• 38:19
  interviews or interviews in person.
• 38:21
  I had better fortune of recording them.
• 38:24
  There are a lot of people that say, well, how do you know?
• 38:26
  I said, not only do I know, I've got the recorded voice.
• 38:29
  No, this has to be, attribution is the best source, you know, in
• 38:33
  putting together a book or a film.
• 38:35
  A lot of his racing friends have passed on, but it was great talking to them.
• 38:40
  They didn't think James Dean would be a great racer.
• 38:42
  They thought he was, it was a publicity stunt, but he had the tenacity
• 38:46
  and he had the passion for speed.
• 38:48
  He had the right car, let's not forget.
• 38:50
  He fortunately, his craft was acting and he was making a boatload of
• 38:55
  money that he could have a Porsche.
• 38:57
  He could afford a, not one Porsche, but two Porsches or
• 39:00
  Lotus or anything that he wanted.
• 39:02
  A lot of people think, well, He was just in it for, you know, the publicity.
• 39:06
  No, he was serious.
• 39:07
  I think that he could have been a better driver if he had more seat time.
• 39:11
  As I mentioned, he was busy filming.
• 39:13
  He missed a lot of races and some of his competitors had raced and
• 39:17
  they were getting better than he was because they knew the tracks.
• 39:21
  The first time you're learning, the second time you have a little
• 39:23
  bit more confidence when you race.
• 39:25
  I've learned that over the years.
• 39:27
  Do any other actors attribute their passion for racing to James Dean?
• 39:32
  You already mentioned Steve.
• 39:33
  McQueen, but they came up at the same time.
• 39:35
  I'm thinking of people like maybe Paul Newman or others that
• 39:39
  have gone down the same path.
• 39:40
  Do they ever credit James Dean's that, or did they come to it on their own?
• 39:44
  Excellent question.
• 39:45
  I had the good fortune to meet Paul Newman at Seabrook in 1977.
• 39:51
  I was curling for a very famous Baltimoreian by the name of
• 39:55
  Bruce Jennings, who had the nickname of King Carrera.
• 39:58
  And we were competing in the EMSA series.
• 40:01
  under, uh, G.
• 40:03
  T.
• 40:03
  U.
• 40:03
  Smaller C.
• 40:04
  C.
• 40:04
  S.
• 40:05
  Paul Newman came to sea break as a co driver for Bill Freeman in Beverly Hills.
• 40:11
  Porsche.
• 40:12
  They also had a G.
• 40:13
  T.
• 40:13
  U.
• 40:13
  Car and Paul had never driven at night.
• 40:16
  And so Bruce Jennings offered to give him a chalk talk at night.
• 40:20
  Paul Newman came with the popcorn and we sat down.
• 40:23
  I got to listen and Bruce said, you know, you may think there aren't
• 40:27
  any markers at night, but there are and I'm going to point them out to
• 40:30
  you and you're going to need these markers for breaking and for turning.
• 40:33
  And it really helped Paul Newman.
• 40:35
  So I got to meet Paul and Paul always said, you know, I raced Sebring once
• 40:40
  and I didn't want to race it again.
• 40:41
  It was a race that I love to hate because it was so difficult.
• 40:45
  And of course, Bruce Jennings had been racing it for umpteen
• 40:48
  years and once finished third overall in 1962 in a RS, a 61.
• 40:53
  I got to know Paul Newman over the years.
• 40:56
  I would see him at Lime Rock at some of the vintage racing.
• 40:59
  I actually raced against him in a race.
• 41:01
  He was.
• 41:01
  Racing a Brumos 914 6.
• 41:04
  I was on the pole.
• 41:05
  I was probably qualified 15th or 16th of the 356 group.
• 41:09
  And by lap six, I saw him coming around the corner in my mirrors.
• 41:14
  He was going to lap me.
• 41:15
  And I just pulled over to the right, pointed out to the left and let him pass.
• 41:19
  And my biggest thrill was that he took his hand off that steering
• 41:23
  wheel and gave me a huge wave.
• 41:24
  Oh, that's awesome.
• 41:25
  And I wish that I could have recorded it.
• 41:27
  But I got to interview Paul Newman in 2004 because he had driven his first
• 41:32
  Porsche in a movie called Harper.
• 41:34
  And it was an old clapped out speedster.
• 41:36
  And he told me that was the first time that he had had a Porsche.
• 41:39
  Since that time, he had bought many Porsches because
• 41:42
  he loved that car so much.
• 41:44
  But I asked him, I said, you know, you competed against James Dean for
• 41:47
  roles and James Dean won, you know, and they both competed for Rebel Without a
• 41:52
  Cause and also for, uh, East of Eden.
• 41:56
  And I said, did you ever talk about cars?
• 41:58
  He said, Lee, cars were the furthest thing from my mind.
• 42:01
  I was never, ever concerned about racing cars.
• 42:05
  I had never seen a car race.
• 42:07
  You know, on the East Coast or the West Coast.
• 42:09
  And I knew that James Dean, you know, was really a motorhead, but I wasn't.
• 42:13
  It's something that he picked up.
• 42:15
  Coincidentally, he went to Lime Rock Park and a friend of his said,
• 42:19
  why don't you take the 356 around?
• 42:21
  And he got the bug.
• 42:22
  He loved it.
• 42:23
  And he had just such a natural eye hand coordination.
• 42:27
  He was a tremendous driver, and starting at the age of 50, which is incredible.
• 42:32
  Most people are retiring at the age of 50.
• 42:34
  Exactly, exactly.
• 42:35
  Steve McQueen, on the other hand, was also a motorhead, mostly on motorbikes,
• 42:41
  and was really tenacious and fearless.
• 42:43
  But he didn't have the money to get into racing until he became more successful.
• 42:47
  So let's get back to the James Dean story.
• 42:50
  Let's get back to this late summer, early fall 1955 and
• 42:54
  pick up the story from there.
• 42:56
  And let's unfortunately get into his tragic demise, right?
• 43:00
  The crash itself.
• 43:01
  Well, I mentioned that he missed a lot of racing, a lot of seat time,
• 43:06
  and he said to his mechanic, I need a faster car, I need a faster car.
• 43:09
  Well, the guys he was competing against, and they were the same people at most
• 43:13
  races, more people were buying Porsches, and they were beating James Dean because
• 43:19
  they were familiar with the track.
• 43:20
  I think that James Dean was not a Phil Hill or a Sterling Moss.
• 43:26
  I think that he was tenacious, he was passionate about racing.
• 43:29
  But his goal was to put the pedal to the metal, and he really lacked the
• 43:35
  nuances of, you know, how to approach the apex of a turn, when to brake,
• 43:41
  when to accelerate, uh, when to shift.
• 43:43
  I think that he just tried to race as fast as he could.
• 43:46
  And there wasn't a race that he was in where he didn't have some metal
• 43:50
  to metal contact with somebody.
• 43:52
  He was seriously myopic.
• 43:54
  He needed glasses.
• 43:55
  He couldn't drive without his glasses.
• 43:57
  I am too.
• 43:58
  When I raced, I wore contact lenses for the sole reason that when I wore
• 44:03
  my glasses, I had no lateral vision.
• 44:05
  So I couldn't see a car that was coming up on either side of me.
• 44:09
  I was really at a disadvantage as with a lot of people.
• 44:12
  So that's something that I've analyzed about James Dean, that his
• 44:17
  lack of clear vision or being 20 20 was a deterrent to his racing.
• 44:22
  So, James Dean wanted a faster car.
• 44:25
  I mentioned that he tried to buy the Lotus, which would have
• 44:28
  been a sports racer, but he was lucky enough to get the 550.
• 44:32
  It's interesting, someone asked me, well, how did this 550 qualify on the street?
• 44:37
  It was a race car, wasn't it?
• 44:39
  I said, yep, it was aluminum and it weighed 1300 pounds.
• 44:42
  But it had lights, it had a horn, it had turn signals.
• 44:46
  It did not have windshield wipers because it had a plexiglass windshield.
• 44:50
  But other than that, it was a street car.
• 44:53
  And of course, the reason it had headlights was because Porsche
• 44:57
  was using this for night racing as well, for the endurance racing.
• 45:00
  So it made sense.
• 45:01
  In California, this car qualified, it was streetable.
• 45:05
  So he got a license on it.
• 45:06
  He had nine days from the time he bought it.
• 45:09
  on September 21st to get this car prepared for the race at Salinas
• 45:15
  and the plan was that they would put it on a rented trailer.
• 45:19
  He didn't own a trailer, although he's having one made.
• 45:21
  It wasn't finished yet.
• 45:23
  Rolf Witterecht got him a trailer from another Cal Club racer.
• 45:27
  They borrowed the trailer, two axle trailer.
• 45:30
  James Dean had bought a Ford station wagon as his tow vehicle.
• 45:34
  So it had a hitch on it.
• 45:35
  They realized that the car, it needed to be run in.
• 45:38
  It just didn't have any miles on it.
• 45:39
  So James Dean was trying to break it in, but he was also finishing up Giant.
• 45:44
  He was like running from pillar to post, from acting to racing.
• 45:48
  And they were, they would go out at night, Bill Hickman and he, and they
• 45:51
  would put a couple, a hundred miles on.
• 45:53
  It wasn't enough.
• 45:54
  So they put it on the trailer.
• 45:56
  That's the thought.
• 45:57
  And they'll tow it.
• 45:58
  Rolf Wittereg, strictly by the book, said, No, you've got to break this car in.
• 46:02
  You and I will drive it to Salinas, and the Ford station wagon with
• 46:07
  the empty trailer will follow us.
• 46:08
  So that was the scenario.
• 46:10
  On September 30th of Friday, James Dean had dropped the car off the night before.
• 46:16
  Rolf Wittereg, the mechanic, did the valve clearance, changed the plugs,
• 46:21
  changed the oil, set the timing.
• 46:23
  And they were running a little bit behind, and Rolf said, I want
• 46:26
  to put on safety belts for you.
• 46:28
  So he installed safety belts on the driver's side, but
• 46:32
  not on the passenger side.
• 46:34
  They left about an hour and a half late.
• 46:36
  They left almost at two o'clock.
• 46:38
  They headed out Ventura Boulevard.
• 46:41
  A couple of famous shots that were taken by Sanford Roth, who was the
• 46:45
  photographer that took photos earlier during the day at Competition Motors.
• 46:49
  It shows a car coming up on James Dean on Ventura and then passing him.
• 46:55
  Stanford Roth took those shots in black and white.
• 46:57
  These are the only photos that we have.
• 47:00
  Right before they left Competition Motors on their way, they
• 47:03
  stopped at a gas station.
• 47:05
  The most famous photo and the last photo of James Dean alive was taken
• 47:09
  at a mobile station in Sherman Oaks.
• 47:11
  where everybody filled up their tank.
• 47:13
  Sanford Roth did not take that photo.
• 47:15
  It was in color.
• 47:16
  It was taken by the mechanic with a Leica 35 millimeter using color film.
• 47:22
  So the photos that show up in color, there's three of them.
• 47:25
  Sanford Roth, the photographer, didn't take them.
• 47:27
  He was shooting black and white.
• 47:28
  It took me years to figure that out because everybody thought
• 47:32
  that they came from one camera.
• 47:34
  They did not.
• 47:34
  There was no interstate, so they headed up I 99, which is Sepulveda Boulevard,
• 47:40
  went through the Grapevine, south of Bakersfield, on 99, at Wheeler Ridge.
• 47:46
  California Highway Patrolman was traveling south, they were going north.
• 47:51
  It was a divided area.
• 47:52
  He did a yo yo and followed them, pulled them both over for speeding.
• 47:57
  James Dean was ticketed for 10 miles over the limit.
• 48:00
  Bill Hickman, who was driving the station wagon with the trailer, he
• 48:03
  also got a ticket because California had a law, maximum 45 with a trailer.
• 48:10
  So he got, he got busted for 15 miles over the limit.
• 48:13
  CHP officer, his name is Ovie V.
• 48:17
  Hunter, who recently died, has been interviewed over and over again.
• 48:21
  I had the good fortune to talk to him many times, and he told
• 48:24
  me about how he pulled him over.
• 48:26
  He heard the car, he saw the car.
• 48:28
  There was a curiosity because it was a sports car.
• 48:30
  Hunter was about six foot two.
• 48:32
  Spider is 39 inches high from a tire to the plexi and he was fascinated by the
• 48:39
  car but he left with parting words he says you better slow down or you're not
• 48:43
  gonna make it to Salinas and James Dean said well you know it car's not running
• 48:47
  right unless it's going at least 80 miles an hour they sort of laughed it off.
• 48:51
  Anyway, he took the ticket and folded it into thirds, put it into his shirt pocket.
• 48:56
  This was at 3.
• 48:56
  30 in the afternoon.
• 48:58
  To do the chronology, you can figure out when he left, when he got the
• 49:02
  ticket, they took the racer's road.
• 49:04
  They did not go through Bakersfield because the racer said it's too slow.
• 49:09
  There's a traffic signal in every street corner.
• 49:12
  Take the racer's road.
• 49:13
  You can go as fast as you can.
• 49:15
  So it was a left.
• 49:16
  On these two lane highways, it's about 50, 60 miles.
• 49:20
  And they would end up at Blackwell's corner, which is at route 466.
• 49:24
  Blackwell's corner was a small coffee restaurant, gas stop back then.
• 49:31
  And, uh, James Dean, when he pulled in flagged down.
• 49:35
  Bill Hickman, because Hickman didn't know that he had stopped there.
• 49:38
  He had actually seen a Mercedes 300 SL Coupe, and it belonged to Lance Raventlow,
• 49:43
  and his co driver was Kessler, so he knew Raventlow was going to the races, so they
• 49:49
  stopped and they chatted for a while.
• 49:51
  Raventlow and Bruce Kessler left, I'd say about 10 minutes before James Dean,
• 49:56
  and they agreed to meet at Paso Robles for dinner at little after six o'clock.
• 50:01
  So here we are at five o'clock at Blackwell's Corner.
• 50:04
  James Dean told Sanford Roth and Bill Hickman, we're going
• 50:08
  to have dinner at six o'clock.
• 50:09
  They took off.
• 50:10
  It basically is a very interesting stretch of road.
• 50:14
  It's the desert.
• 50:15
  It's flat.
• 50:15
  And then it goes through an area called the Polonio Pass, and then all of a
• 50:20
  sudden it shoots down about 45 degrees to the floor of the Chalem Valley.
• 50:25
  Today, it's a two lane, three lane highway, but it was a country road,
• 50:30
  single lane, 22 feet wide, which meant that each lane was about 10 feet wide.
• 50:36
  And I've traveled on it.
• 50:37
  There's still remnants of the road.
• 50:40
  I don't know that I would have the balls to drive 80, 90 miles
• 50:44
  an hour down this curvy road.
• 50:46
  It's unbelievable.
• 50:47
  Scary.
• 50:48
  Really scary.
• 50:49
  But that's what James Dean was doing.
• 50:51
  And as they approached the Chelan Valley down the Antelope grade, they passed
• 50:56
  a Pontiac with two individuals in it.
• 50:58
  I'd say about a 30 to 45 seconds before the junction before 66 and 41.
• 51:04
  It's a wide junction at Chelan.
• 51:06
  And the husband said to the wife, boy, look at him.
• 51:09
  They were going about 78 miles an hour.
• 51:12
  And they figured James Dean was exceeding 85, maybe 90 miles
• 51:16
  an hour when they passed him.
• 51:18
  And as they passed the Pontiac, an oncoming car was forced off the
• 51:22
  road because the road was so narrow.
• 51:24
  So it's interesting.
• 51:25
  James Dean didn't let up.
• 51:27
  I think that he came so fast behind this Pontiac that his closing speed was scary.
• 51:32
  So scary that he whipped to the left to pass the car.
• 51:36
  He couldn't stop.
• 51:37
  He would have run into the car.
• 51:38
  30 seconds later.
• 51:40
  There was a horrible accident, a car coming the other way, a 1950
• 51:44
  Ford Custom that was, had a big engine in it, was turning left.
• 51:49
  In a conventional turn, you would use your turn signal, in those days you might
• 51:53
  stick your left hand out, horizontally.
• 51:56
  Signaling that you were making a left turn.
• 51:58
  This driver did not.
• 52:00
  He cut across the junction at a 45 degree angle.
• 52:04
  So he crossed over the center line and then all of a sudden
• 52:07
  he saw an oncoming vehicle.
• 52:09
  He couldn't have imagined that this vehicle 39 inches high was
• 52:14
  traveling at 85 or 90 miles an hour.
• 52:16
  And it was, and he spiked his brakes to stop.
• 52:20
  He couldn't stop and he went back on the gas and then he realized, I'm in trouble.
• 52:25
  So he really jammed on his brakes, laying another patch, 30 foot skid.
• 52:30
  He practically was stopped in the westbound lane.
• 52:33
  James Dean saw the car, made a racing maneuver, went to the right,
• 52:38
  on the power, no brakes, no brake lights were seen by the witnesses.
• 52:42
  But in that mid engine Porsche, he lost it.
• 52:45
  The low center of gravity caught up with him.
• 52:48
  The rear end came around counterclockwise and he hit his left
• 52:52
  front into the left front of the Ford that was practically stopped.
• 52:56
  Dean pushed the Ford 45 feet in the reverse lane, spiraled
• 53:01
  up 45 degrees and turned over.
• 53:04
  actually turned over and landed on its wheels 40 feet westbound.
• 53:09
  So it was flying in midair as it rolled over, did a barrel roll.
• 53:14
  All this has been speculated back and forth, but it was the
• 53:17
  witnesses that said no brake lights.
• 53:20
  And we saw something fall out of the car as it was turning over.
• 53:24
  That would be the mechanic, Rolf.
• 53:26
  He fell out of the car.
• 53:27
  And he's lucky that the Porsche didn't land on top of him,
• 53:30
  because he landed about five feet away from where the car was.
• 53:33
  And he didn't have belts.
• 53:35
  No belt, the passenger side.
• 53:37
  James Dean had a belt, wasn't wearing it.
• 53:39
  So there was some speculation by other witnesses saying, well, no,
• 53:43
  the person wearing the red shirt.
• 53:46
  which would be Rolf the mechanic.
• 53:48
  He was driving.
• 53:49
  James Dean was wearing a t shirt, not a red jacket.
• 53:52
  That red jacket wasn't in the car.
• 53:54
  That was at Warner Brothers.
• 53:55
  He was wearing a v neck white t shirt.
• 53:57
  This 15 year old witness said, no, the man wearing the red was driving.
• 54:03
  No, he wasn't driving.
• 54:04
  The car was upside down, so he, the right side became the left side when he saw it.
• 54:08
  The reason I know all this, despite what everybody else wants to say, is
• 54:13
  that James Dean's left foot got crushed between the clutch and the brake pedal.
• 54:19
  Crushed.
• 54:19
  He was captive in that car.
• 54:21
  Rolf flew out, James Dean's seat broke loose and flew out, and James Dean was
• 54:27
  stretched, which was not uncommon in a race car accident, left foot still
• 54:33
  mangled and crushed between the brake and the clutch, his body was stretched
• 54:38
  in that little cockpit, and he wound up hanging over the passenger door.
• 54:42
  If it weren't for the witnesses and if it weren't for the ambulance driver that had
• 54:46
  to use a crowbar to extricate him, there could have been more speculation about
• 54:51
  James Dean letting Rolfe being the driver.
• 54:54
  There was no reason for him to be the driver in the first place.
• 54:57
  That speculation goes back and forth.
• 54:59
  I see it every day.
• 55:00
  Despite the fact that I've written about it over and over again.
• 55:03
  That's part of the myth that he wasn't driving.
• 55:05
  I mean, you've probably done the math yourself, but have any mathematicians
• 55:09
  or even scientists sat down with you to say, okay, a 1300 pound car
• 55:14
  hitting basically almost a stationary 55 Ford, which probably weighed
• 55:18
  somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 plus pounds to move it 45 feet.
• 55:23
  Can you back calculate how fast he was going at the time of impact?
• 55:26
  Cause he's had to have been doing.
• 55:28
  Almost triple digits to push a car that heavy that far.
• 55:31
  It's like a missile.
• 55:31
  That speculation has been ongoing for 25 years.
• 55:35
  As a matter of fact, I've been involved in most of these TV documentaries.
• 55:39
  The interesting thing is they interview me and then I don't know
• 55:41
  who they're interviewing besides.
• 55:43
  So they went to a company called Failure Analysis around 2005, maybe before then.
• 55:49
  And they did a lot of computer mock ups.
• 55:52
  They made several mistakes.
• 55:54
  First of all, they didn't get the testimony of Mr.
• 55:57
  and Mrs.
• 55:57
  Robert White, who were directly behind James Dean and said, no brake
• 56:01
  lights, somebody fell out of the car.
• 56:03
  The car veered to the right and it flipped over.
• 56:06
  They didn't pay any attention to that.
• 56:08
  There's a reason for it.
• 56:09
  They were going to Portland, Oregon.
• 56:11
  There was a deposition.
• 56:13
  There was no FedEx back then.
• 56:14
  The deposition was mailed by postal service.
• 56:18
  It didn't show up until after the inquest.
• 56:20
  So it was never put into the trial, into the inquest.
• 56:24
  All right.
• 56:24
  So that's number one, but it's readily available.
• 56:27
  I mean, I, I have it.
• 56:28
  I've used it.
• 56:29
  I make reference to it.
• 56:30
  The second thing is they said that James Dean's car upon impact turned into a top.
• 56:36
  It was spinning around, but there are no marks on the ground or.
• 56:40
  you know, on the on the road or the ground.
• 56:42
  If the car was spinning around, there would be impact of all four tires.
• 56:46
  That didn't exist.
• 56:47
  And then two witnesses said the car did a barrel roll, the inertia was
• 56:52
  90 degrees up, and then it went over.
• 56:54
  They said, well, if it's going faster, You know, he would have
• 56:57
  been 100 feet down the road.
• 56:58
  No, the momentum was going up.
• 57:00
  The inertia was up.
• 57:01
  1, 300 pounds and you're right.
• 57:03
  I think the Ford weighed about 2, 600 pounds.
• 57:06
  If you look at the crash photos, you'll see that the left front wheel was
• 57:11
  crushed against the back, the firewall.
• 57:14
  It was moved three feet.
• 57:15
  That's solid steel.
• 57:17
  You know, everybody said, well, well, you know, if James Dean had been
• 57:19
  wearing a seatbelt, if the car had been made more safer, well, that's all
• 57:23
  speculation, but we're talking about 1955, and this is a race car, right?
• 57:28
  It's not a passenger car.
• 57:29
  There were no safety guidelines back then.
• 57:32
  I've been through this two or three times.
• 57:34
  There's been computer analysis every single time.
• 57:37
  And these people are paid serious dollars for their services.
• 57:42
  They didn't do their homework.
• 57:43
  I'm not saying that they should have talked to me, but they
• 57:45
  just, didn't do their homework.
• 57:46
  on the road, but there ar
• 57:50
  that have come to me and is from other acc
• 58:02
  Today, the state of California, Caltran, is actually going to build
• 58:06
  a ramp over 466, is now 46, to avoid the accident of people turning left.
• 58:13
  That road sees produce trucks hauling ass at 90 miles an hour.
• 58:17
  As a matter of fact, when I'm there and I'm looking at the crash site, the
• 58:20
  biggest thrill for these guys is to honk their horn, to let everybody know, I know
• 58:24
  what's here, it's James Dean's crash site.
• 58:26
  So that brings up a really good point.
• 58:28
  As you've just said, the site itself hasn't changed much.
• 58:32
  The surrounding area has.
• 58:34
  You can go there and see it today with your own eyes, and
• 58:37
  it has a history of incident.
• 58:38
  It has a history of accidents and whatnot.
• 58:41
  So it kind of begs the question, when you look at the scenario, whoever
• 58:45
  engineered that intersection, etc.,
• 58:47
  where is fault placed?
• 58:49
  Is it placed on the Ford?
• 58:51
  or on the Porsche on James Dean or the other people and how does it play out?
• 58:55
  How do you see it?
• 58:56
  Maybe because I'm a lawyer, maybe because I understand the law and maybe
• 59:00
  because I went to the 1955 motor vehicle code, you know, for some answers.
• 59:06
  The two California highway patrolmen came.
• 59:09
  You had a serious accident.
• 59:10
  You had a fatality.
• 59:12
  They had to try and organize what was going on.
• 59:15
  There were cars, place was crowded, they needed more help.
• 59:19
  They didn't get it.
• 59:19
  They had an ambulance that took James Dean and the mechanic Rolf
• 59:23
  to the Paso Robles Hospital.
• 59:25
  They tried to sort things out.
• 59:26
  The CHP officers had never seen a Porsche.
• 59:30
  They had never seen a race car, they had never seen a damaged race car.
• 59:35
  They couldn't figure it out.
• 59:37
  They'd say, well, he's going faster than 55.
• 59:40
  Well, yeah, he's going faster than 55.
• 59:42
  Well, here's what I did.
• 59:43
  I went to the graphs.
• 59:45
  I went to the Porsche 550 books and I looked at the transmission
• 59:50
  and what gear you had to be in.
• 59:52
  The RPM versus.
• 59:54
  The speed, James Dean was in fourth gear.
• 59:57
  He hadn't shifted down the third.
• 59:59
  You wouldn't go into fourth gear unless you were going 80 miles an hour.
• 1:00:03
  And you know, 80 to 125, that was the range of the fourth gear.
• 1:00:08
  There weren't any brake lights.
• 1:00:09
  I don't think he took his foot off the gas until, you know, possibly the impact.
• 1:00:14
  You know, he was clipped pretty good because his riding height was the same
• 1:00:18
  height as the grill and the headlight of that Ford, he took a huge hit.
• 1:00:22
  There was no protection for him.
• 1:00:24
  I looked at the speed.
• 1:00:26
  Everybody likes to say, Oh, it's not James Dean's fault.
• 1:00:29
  Poor James Dean.
• 1:00:30
  Well, they both were speeding.
• 1:00:32
  Donald Turnipseed was a college student under the GI Bill at Cal Poly.
• 1:00:38
  Every Friday he was booking home to his pregnant wife in Tulare and
• 1:00:42
  he's driving a hot rod fifties car with, you know, with a big engine.
• 1:00:46
  I think that Donald Turnipsey played a game every weekend to see how
• 1:00:51
  fast he could get home from A to B.
• 1:00:53
  When he made that left turn, he never slowed down and braked
• 1:00:57
  and then made a left turn.
• 1:00:58
  He just went diagonally across the roadway because he didn't see anything coming.
• 1:01:03
  His attorney said, keep your mouth shut.
• 1:01:05
  He did say, when I saw him coming, it was too late.
• 1:01:08
  Yeah, it was too late, but he didn't make a decision.
• 1:01:10
  If he had veered over to the right, they probably would have missed each other.
• 1:01:14
  But he kept advancing.
• 1:01:16
  I think that the California Highway Patrol didn't understand
• 1:01:20
  the dynamics of that crash.
• 1:01:22
  I refer to this accident as an unguarded moment for both individuals.
• 1:01:26
  There was an inquest on October 11th.
• 1:01:28
  Donald Turnipsey was a local boy in a very conservative area.
• 1:01:32
  It's 1955.
• 1:01:33
  James Dean was a young actor.
• 1:01:37
  That bought a 7, 000 German car who was carrying a former Luftwaffe soldier,
• 1:01:46
  not that many years after the war.
• 1:01:48
  At the inquest, James Dean, this is Lee the lawyer speaking.
• 1:01:52
  had no representation.
• 1:01:55
  Rolf Witterich was in the hospital, drugged up.
• 1:01:58
  They interviewed him, he didn't know A from B when they interviewed him.
• 1:02:02
  His testimony should have been thrown out.
• 1:02:04
  No one represented James Dean.
• 1:02:06
  Donald Ternosy was represented.
• 1:02:07
  The attorney told him to keep his mouth shut.
• 1:02:10
  Just say you didn't see him until it was too late.
• 1:02:12
  There was a jury.
• 1:02:13
  They met for less than a half an hour.
• 1:02:16
  They came back.
• 1:02:17
  They found no fault of either party.
• 1:02:20
  If you or I have been driving that Ford and made that left turn, failure to
• 1:02:25
  yield to an oncoming vehicle, creating a fatality, we would have been charged.
• 1:02:31
  At least Donald Turnipseed should have been charged.
• 1:02:34
  With a misdemeanor fatality, he wasn't charged at all.
• 1:02:38
  Did he come out of the crash pretty much unscathed?
• 1:02:41
  Did the Ford protect him?
• 1:02:42
  His nose, his nose went against the wheel.
• 1:02:45
  He may have broken his nose.
• 1:02:46
  That's all.
• 1:02:47
  Okay.
• 1:02:47
  The windshield was cracked.
• 1:02:49
  So his head may have hit the windshield too.
• 1:02:51
  He wasn't wearing a seatbelt.
• 1:02:52
  He's very lucky, but 2, 600 pound car.
• 1:02:57
  It's a pretty big car.
• 1:02:58
  And you know, incidentally, I've never driven a 1950 Ford.
• 1:03:01
  But I've driven 1954 Ford sedan, you know, they were known for a lot of stability
• 1:03:08
  at 60 miles an hour, making a left turn.
• 1:03:10
  He may have been close to being up on two wheels when he made that
• 1:03:14
  turn and he was practically stopped.
• 1:03:16
  So it's.
• 1:03:17
  three speed gearbox.
• 1:03:19
  He had no torque to get back on the power at that point.
• 1:03:22
  He was practically stopped at that point.
• 1:03:24
  I've gone through the accident back and forth.
• 1:03:27
  I have a lot of competition.
• 1:03:28
  You know, a lot of people that are Dean fans, they don't want to
• 1:03:30
  see any blame towards James Dean.
• 1:03:32
  He was a victim.
• 1:03:33
  The way I see it is they both were speeding, they both were at fault,
• 1:03:37
  but Donald Turnipsey was more at fault because he caused the fatality.
• 1:03:40
  And you mentioned earlier there was this flash point in the James Dean
• 1:03:44
  story where suddenly arises myth and legend and then we start talking about
• 1:03:50
  fact and fiction, but one of those.
• 1:03:52
  Let's call them tall tales that has grown out of the James Dean
• 1:03:57
  ethos is talk about this curse.
• 1:04:00
  And it's theorized that James Dean's death was not his own fault, right?
• 1:04:04
  As we're talking about here, but rather that of the car.
• 1:04:06
  Uh, some have said that this particular Porsche 550 Spyder has
• 1:04:10
  its own dark and unsettling past.
• 1:04:12
  They try to paint this ominous picture.
• 1:04:14
  Legends, myth, and other tall tales surround this story.
• 1:04:18
  And some go as far as.
• 1:04:19
  say that someone building the 550 actually died during the construction
• 1:04:23
  of the vehicle and his soul haunted the car after its completion at the factory.
• 1:04:27
  Yada, yada, yada, right?
• 1:04:28
  The stories go on and on.
• 1:04:29
  The fish was this big, but let's dive into a little bit of
• 1:04:33
  fact versus fiction and unpack.
• 1:04:36
  This whole curse story and this whole curse idea, Eric,
• 1:04:39
  that's what keeps us going.
• 1:04:42
  There's no question.
• 1:04:43
  I mean, we're talking about 66 years later, you know, we're
• 1:04:47
  still talking about the curse of James Dean and all these myths.
• 1:04:51
  Well, besides me, there are other famous motorsport journalists like
• 1:04:56
  Matt Stone and Preston Lerner.
• 1:04:58
  Who, you know, have pretty good reputations.
• 1:05:01
  They've come to the same conclusion I have.
• 1:05:03
  We've all debunked a lot of the curse and the myth.
• 1:05:06
  So, we have this crash, September 30, 1955.
• 1:05:09
  The car is a mess, and it's towed back to Competition Motors.
• 1:05:14
  by John von Neumann.
• 1:05:15
  We have James Dean dead and preparing, you know, for his burial in Fairmont, Indiana.
• 1:05:20
  Rolf was in the hospital for a couple of weeks.
• 1:05:23
  Von Neumann made arrangements to have a very famous German surgeon
• 1:05:28
  look at him to save his leg.
• 1:05:30
  He almost lost his leg because it was so badly twisted.
• 1:05:34
  James Dean is racing against amateur racers, same guys, same
• 1:05:39
  races, and one particular person that he raced against was a doctor.
• 1:05:43
  His name was William Eskridge, who lived in Burbank, not far from Warner Brothers.
• 1:05:48
  Not only was William Eskridge a good orthopedic surgeon, he was a brilliant
• 1:05:53
  engineer, and he was racing specials that he built himself, using, by the way,
• 1:05:58
  an Offenhauser engine in one of them.
• 1:06:00
  When he heard about the wreck, he said, you know, this is my lucky day.
• 1:06:04
  I just bought a roller, a Lotus from Jay Chamberlain without an engine.
• 1:06:09
  I'm going to buy that Porsche and I'm going to put the four cam engine up front.
• 1:06:13
  It's never been done, but I can do it.
• 1:06:15
  And he used an MG transmission and Austin Healey gearbox, the rear end.
• 1:06:20
  So he bought the car from the insurance company.
• 1:06:24
  James Dean's sole heir was his father.
• 1:06:26
  He didn't have a will.
• 1:06:27
  So he was paid off.
• 1:06:29
  They gave him about 5, 000, maybe a little bit more for the car.
• 1:06:33
  The salvage company got hold of the wreck and sold it to William Eskridge, right
• 1:06:39
  down the street from where he lived.
• 1:06:40
  He was first up.
• 1:06:41
  He bought the car for 1, 150.
• 1:06:47
  1, 150.
• 1:06:47
  What did he get?
• 1:06:48
  Practically an undamaged engine.
• 1:06:50
  Transmission was slightly damaged because it had been locked in fourth
• 1:06:54
  gear, so that needed to be cleaned out.
• 1:06:56
  And he bought movable parts.
• 1:06:58
  He bought instruments and suspensions, and he took what he wanted for his
• 1:07:04
  Lotus, and the rest of it was junk.
• 1:07:07
  And he gave it to someone that was supposed to take
• 1:07:10
  it to the San Fernando dump.
• 1:07:13
  But somewhere along the way, those individuals knew George Barris, and
• 1:07:17
  George Barris wound up with the carcass.
• 1:07:19
  Never bought it, got it for free.
• 1:07:22
  George will tell you if you're still alive because he's written about it.
• 1:07:25
  I bought the car.
• 1:07:27
  No, we didn't buy the car.
• 1:07:28
  William Eskridge bought it.
• 1:07:29
  Eskridge created the POTUS, P O T U S.
• 1:07:32
  Think about that.
• 1:07:33
  He should have copyrighted and trademarked the name, POTUS.
• 1:07:37
  President of the United States.
• 1:07:39
  He named this Lotus, the POTUS, and I have photos of.
• 1:07:42
  POTUS on the car.
• 1:07:43
  It was brilliant.
• 1:07:44
  He's got a 4 cam engine mounted up front and he's winning races.
• 1:07:49
  And he's racing against, who's he racing against?
• 1:07:51
  Von Neumann and Richie Ginther in 550s.
• 1:07:54
  He's almost beating them.
• 1:07:55
  He races the car, he's got some problems, but he's sorting it out.
• 1:08:00
  In October of 1956, which would be a year after James Dean
• 1:08:04
  died, they're racing at Pomona.
• 1:08:06
  which was on the schedule.
• 1:08:07
  Pomona was always an October race, and he's racing the POTUS.
• 1:08:11
  Previous to the race, he gave some parts to his orthopedic friend, Dr.
• 1:08:18
  Troy McHenry, who also had a 550.
• 1:08:21
  But McHenry wasn't as accomplished as Dr.
• 1:08:23
  Estridge, wasn't a good driver.
• 1:08:25
  They're both competitive.
• 1:08:27
  Good friends, but competitive.
• 1:08:28
  But down deep inside, Troy Henry wanted to beat him.
• 1:08:31
  So he decided he had an accident at Paramount Ranch before Pomona.
• 1:08:36
  He decided he's going to lighten up his Porsche, which was 1300 pounds.
• 1:08:40
  He's going to make it a thousand pounds.
• 1:08:41
  He's going to remove some of the steel and some of the aluminum, and he's going
• 1:08:45
  to substitute that with fiberglass.
• 1:08:48
  What he created was a loosey goosey car.
• 1:08:51
  No stability.
• 1:08:52
  Everyone likes to say, well he's got suspension parts, he's got the
• 1:08:56
  transmission, he's got this and that from James Dean's car in his car.
• 1:09:00
  No, he did not have any of those parts.
• 1:09:02
  He may have had them in his garage, but they weren't on the car.
• 1:09:04
  This is something I've been battling for years and years and years.
• 1:09:07
  How can I prove it?
• 1:09:08
  Well, I couldn't interview Troy McHenry, but I interviewed
• 1:09:11
  plenty of people that knew that.
• 1:09:12
  Isn't it extra challenging though, because the Germans, unlike the
• 1:09:16
  Americans, you know, we have the fabled numbers matching cars, right?
• 1:09:21
  The numbers matching system, the Germans back then, they didn't
• 1:09:24
  serialize everything to the vehicle the way the Americans did.
• 1:09:28
  So doesn't it make it harder to track down what part belonged
• 1:09:31
  to which car and all that?
• 1:09:33
  Yes and no.
• 1:09:34
  Trailing arms, yes.
• 1:09:35
  Transmission, no.
• 1:09:37
  Because on the Kardex, we know the transmission number of the 550.
• 1:09:42
  Troy McHenry didn't have it on his car.
• 1:09:44
  After he died, they disposed of the car.
• 1:09:47
  It went one direction, the other parts went another.
• 1:09:50
  A racer by the name of Al Qadrobi, and also a good mechanic, Got hold
• 1:09:56
  of the transmission, opened it up, fixed the fourth gear that was stuck.
• 1:10:00
  See, that's another thing.
• 1:10:01
  That transmission wasn't gonna work in anybody's car until it got fixed.
• 1:10:04
  It was stuck by the accident.
• 1:10:06
  Kodroby fixed it, kept it for a while, didn't use it.
• 1:10:09
  It was sold to a person by the name of Ned McHedry, a Porsche guy near San Francisco,
• 1:10:15
  who then sold it to another Porsche phile by the name of Jim Barrington, who lived
• 1:10:19
  in Piedmont, just north of Berkeley.
• 1:10:22
  Barrington never used it, and when I was writing about James Dean in the
• 1:10:27
  80s, Barrington got hold of me and said, I got something of interest for you.
• 1:10:32
  He sends me this photo of the transmission resting on some
• 1:10:36
  old tires under his front porch.
• 1:10:39
  No, not Porsche, but porch, his front porch.
• 1:10:43
  Up close, he took a photo of the serial number, which matched my cardex.
• 1:10:49
  Jim Barrington owned James Dean's transmission.
• 1:10:51
  And he had three disassembled 550s that were for sale.
• 1:10:56
  He sent me a copy.
• 1:10:57
  If I had had a spare 14, 000, I could have bought one.
• 1:11:01
  I just bought a Speedster for 6, 000 and that was all I could afford.
• 1:11:05
  He had three disassembled cars.
• 1:11:07
  One car was 550 029.
• 1:11:12
  Didn't mean anything to me then.
• 1:11:14
  It wasn't until decades later that I realized it was Troy McHenry's car.
• 1:11:19
  Oh wow.
• 1:11:19
  Troy McHenry's car he had all cobbled up.
• 1:11:22
  So what goes around comes around.
• 1:11:24
  It's really amazing.
• 1:11:25
  Okay.
• 1:11:26
  Troy McHenry dies, didn't die because of James Dean's parts.
• 1:11:30
  A lot of people say, well, he was cursed, he died.
• 1:11:32
  No, what happened was he was in a hurry, had taken all these parts.
• 1:11:37
  He was fiberglassing the car.
• 1:11:38
  He had an accident before.
• 1:11:40
  He needed to have a new Volkswagen steering arm put in, and he was
• 1:11:45
  putting it in right before the race.
• 1:11:47
  In a Porsche, 356 Porsche, you have two halves with a coupler and four bolts that
• 1:11:53
  holds the coupler together for steering.
• 1:11:55
  Original was a Volkswagen part, then it became a Pitman part.
• 1:11:58
  This was pre Pitman.
• 1:12:00
  He was putting it together.
• 1:12:01
  He put the four bolts in, but what did he forget to put on?
• 1:12:05
  The four nuts.
• 1:12:06
  On lap two, he's in third place, Eskridge is in front of him and Richie Ginther
• 1:12:11
  driving by Newman's car is in first.
• 1:12:14
  I have actual footage of this.
• 1:12:15
  He's coming along and what I didn't know was he's waving furiously at his pit crew
• 1:12:20
  that something's wrong and he's pointing, but nobody knows what's going wrong.
• 1:12:24
  Well, about 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds later, he lost his steering
• 1:12:29
  and he drove directly into a tree.
• 1:12:32
  and killed himself.
• 1:12:33
  How do I know this?
• 1:12:34
  I interviewed a guy by the name of Al Moss, who was already in his 80s.
• 1:12:38
  He's the one that created Moss Motors, the famous aftermarket
• 1:12:42
  British parts in California.
• 1:12:44
  Moss was on the supervisory team or the judging team.
• 1:12:50
  I guess it was the, um, like a commission.
• 1:12:53
  If you did something wrong, you had to, you had to meet with them.
• 1:12:56
  The bottom line is he inspected the car, he saw the nuts
• 1:13:00
  and the bolts were missing.
• 1:13:01
  The two halves weren't even joined when he saw it because
• 1:13:04
  they completely fallen apart.
• 1:13:05
  How freaky is that?
• 1:13:06
  Somebody was in so much of a hurry.
• 1:13:09
  I once forgot to tighten my lug nuts and I'm driving down the road about one
• 1:13:13
  block and I realized either I have a flat tire or my right wheel's gonna come off.
• 1:13:17
  We've all made mistakes like that.
• 1:13:19
  He made a fatal mistake.
• 1:13:21
  That part of the curse, I've dismissed.
• 1:13:23
  He wasn't killed because of James Dean at all.
• 1:13:26
  A lot of people would like to say it was.
• 1:13:27
  So, George Barris has this carcass.
• 1:13:29
  He said that he's going to rebuild it, but that was a herculean task.
• 1:13:34
  He could never do that.
• 1:13:35
  So what he did was he cut off all the cobbled mess, the crumbled mess, and
• 1:13:40
  he took sheet metal and he welded it on and Dean Jeffries told me that he
• 1:13:46
  saw Some of George Barris's men with two by fours smacking the aluminum to
• 1:13:52
  simulate the closest thing to an accident.
• 1:13:54
  So if you look at photos of the car that really crashed, and then the cars
• 1:13:58
  that went on display with the National Safety Council, they're not even related.
• 1:14:02
  So George Barris is making money doing this.
• 1:14:05
  George Barris also makes money by sending his Hot Rods on a tour.
• 1:14:09
  He had a circus tour of cars.
• 1:14:12
  In 1960, in Baltimore, I went to the Baltimore Auto Show.
• 1:14:17
  Okay.
• 1:14:17
  And what did I see?
• 1:14:18
  The little bastard over in the corner, and nobody was paying any attention to it.
• 1:14:23
  They all wanted to see the Fords and the Chevy Dragsters,
• 1:14:26
  the 406 in all the Hot Rods.
• 1:14:30
  Nobody cared about James Dean's car anymore.
• 1:14:32
  Nobody knew what it was.
• 1:14:33
  It was traveled around.
• 1:14:34
  It was on a dolly.
• 1:14:35
  It was on a skid.
• 1:14:36
  You know, it couldn't even roll it.
• 1:14:38
  And it went from show to show to show.
• 1:14:40
  So I've got all these advertisements through the fifties photos.
• 1:14:45
  In my book, I've shown the chronology of how this car was displayed.
• 1:14:49
  And then you can see things coming off the car.
• 1:14:51
  It has tires.
• 1:14:52
  It doesn't have tires.
• 1:14:54
  It's got a front end.
• 1:14:55
  Doesn't have a front end.
• 1:14:56
  It completely changed it around.
• 1:14:58
  The things were missing.
• 1:14:59
  After a while, it was just a piece of junk and nobody wanted to see it.
• 1:15:03
  My speculation, Eric, is that the music culture of the 60s
• 1:15:08
  brought on the demise of this car.
• 1:15:11
  Why?
• 1:15:11
  Well, it was being advertised as speed kills.
• 1:15:15
  You speed, you die.
• 1:15:16
  Here's James Dean's last sports car.
• 1:15:18
  That's how it was advertised.
• 1:15:19
  By 1960, the Beach Boys and the Hondels and Jan and Dean were
• 1:15:24
  saying, no, faster, faster, faster.
• 1:15:27
  The music culture took over, dragsters took over, and James
• 1:15:31
  Dean wasn't important anymore.
• 1:15:33
  And going into the 70s, I can't picture James Dean wearing a
• 1:15:36
  flowered shirt and bell bottom pants.
• 1:15:40
  Which actually brings up a really great question that I've been
• 1:15:42
  thinking about the entire time.
• 1:15:44
  Had James Dean not selected a Porsche, had he selected, let's say a Corvette, right?
• 1:15:50
  Because the C1 Corvette came in early 1953, late 1952.
• 1:15:54
  Would Chevy have benefited the same way Porsche did?
• 1:15:58
  Would it have made the same impact?
• 1:16:00
  Obviously it changes the whole equation about the accident and all of it, but
• 1:16:04
  would it have painted a different picture?
• 1:16:06
  Would he be the James Dean that we know of if he was driving a Corvette
• 1:16:10
  or does the Porsche just really fit his story more than anything else?
• 1:16:14
  Without the Porsche, we don't have a story.
• 1:16:17
  I've said this a long time ago.
• 1:16:18
  If the Porsche had been on the trailer, we wouldn't have a story.
• 1:16:22
  Two Fords would have come together, and James Dean might not have been killed.
• 1:16:26
  Here's the interesting thing.
• 1:16:27
  1955, Corvette had been out for What two years, 53, 54, 55, I
• 1:16:34
  don't recall actually seeing a Corvette racing until the later 50s.
• 1:16:39
  I know that they did race.
• 1:16:41
  I know they raced at Sebring.
• 1:16:42
  The Corvette didn't handle very well.
• 1:16:44
  The brakes were insufficient, the tires were insufficient, the suspension.
• 1:16:48
  In all the programs that I have from California at the time
• 1:16:51
  James Dean raced, I never saw a Corvette listed in the program.
• 1:16:55
  So let's put that aside.
• 1:16:57
  If James Dean had been driving something other than a Porsche, he might have been
• 1:17:01
  driving an Austin Healey or a Triumph.
• 1:17:03
  Most of the current generation has no clue what an Austin Healey and a Triumph are.
• 1:17:08
  Here's the thing.
• 1:17:08
  He was killed in a Porsche.
• 1:17:10
  Porsche!
• 1:17:11
  came down on John von Neumann.
• 1:17:13
  They would have liked to cut his head off.
• 1:17:15
  They were so humiliated and embarrassed that he sold a car
• 1:17:19
  and someone was killed in it.
• 1:17:21
  Nine days later, recklessly, they wouldn't talk to John von Neumann.
• 1:17:25
  They were so angry at him and Portia didn't mention his name.
• 1:17:29
  Ever until the Boxster came along in 1993, created in 19, actually 1989, 1993.
• 1:17:39
  It was shown at the Detroit car show auto show and went into production in 1997.
• 1:17:45
  And when they finally mentioned James Dean and they came out with a anniversary
• 1:17:50
  special, but it wasn't painted silver with a red interior, the prototype was.
• 1:17:55
  But the anniversary special, they made 1, 954 of them.
• 1:18:01
  That was the first year of the spider.
• 1:18:02
  That's when they started to compare the spider to the Boxster.
• 1:18:06
  Boxster saved them from going bankrupt.
• 1:18:08
  It's the first time they mentioned James Dean.
• 1:18:10
  I have the ad.
• 1:18:11
  I have the ad that they came out with.
• 1:18:13
  They really didn't mention it until 1997.
• 1:18:15
  They were humiliated.
• 1:18:16
  There wasn't any mention of James Dean in the museum.
• 1:18:19
  And when they didn't mention him, they had Donald Turnipsey driving a Studebaker.
• 1:18:26
  Somebody told me that in the museum and I sent him a letter
• 1:18:30
  and I said, you're way off.
• 1:18:32
  Porsche almost got to be a partner with Studebaker in 1953.
• 1:18:36
  They were going to make a sports coupe, but that fell through, but they were
• 1:18:39
  just so far off to answer your question.
• 1:18:42
  It's the Porsche that is so important.
• 1:18:44
  The Porsche that keeps this legacy going.
• 1:18:46
  Why?
• 1:18:47
  Because everybody wants to have a Porsche or a Porsche, depending
• 1:18:51
  on how you want to pronounce it.
• 1:18:52
  One syllable or two.
• 1:18:53
  The closest thing is to the Boxster.
• 1:18:56
  It's a real roadster.
• 1:18:57
  It's a two seater.
• 1:18:58
  It looks like a 550.
• 1:18:59
  The generation today, they can equate the Boxster to James Dean, closer than a 356.
• 1:19:07
  They don't really talk so much about the Speedster.
• 1:19:09
  They don't really know too much about it.
• 1:19:11
  And, you know, that's funny because I associate more with the
• 1:19:14
  speedster than I do with the 550.
• 1:19:16
  I always kind of forget about it because your point is it is so limited number.
• 1:19:20
  Granted, I have a 550 model here in my office amongst all my models and
• 1:19:24
  it sits next to a 356 speedster.
• 1:19:26
  Speedster next to a 19 89, 9 11 speedster, right?
• 1:19:30
  Yeah.
• 1:19:30
  I put all three together and going back, I guess in my formative years too,
• 1:19:34
  looking at shows like Beverly Hills 9 0 2 1 oh, where they painted this modern
• 1:19:38
  picture of James Dean in the character of Dylan driving a black speedster.
• 1:19:43
  My brain always goes there first, and because, look to
• 1:19:46
  your point, he only spent.
• 1:19:48
  Less than two weeks with that 550.
• 1:19:50
  For me, it just never clicked that the 550 was Dean's car, except for that
• 1:19:54
  was the car that he was killed in.
• 1:19:56
  I always thought that the fame, the legacy came from the speedster.
• 1:20:00
  And what I'm about to tell you, and you're one of the first to hear
• 1:20:04
  this, is that James Dean Speedster went missing for five decades.
• 1:20:08
  Really?
• 1:20:09
  Yeah, I've written about it in my book.
• 1:20:11
  Lou Bracker, his best friend, traded his normal in for James Dean
• 1:20:15
  Speedster, raced it a few times, and then it was sold to someone in
• 1:20:20
  Hollywood, around the Hollywood area.
• 1:20:22
  He took it to Portland, Oregon, traded it.
• 1:20:25
  They didn't believe that it was James Dean Speedster.
• 1:20:28
  They called the California Motor Vehicles and they said, Here's the number.
• 1:20:33
  Can you verify this?
• 1:20:35
  MVA sent Union Porsche in Portland a telegram that said first owner James
• 1:20:42
  Byron Dean, second owner Lou Bracker, third owner is this man named Jenner,
• 1:20:48
  and then Jenner traded the car.
• 1:20:50
  Now the car has been, it's a race car now, no bumpers, no top, you know, got
• 1:20:55
  a roll bar and it went through several other individuals and then it was.
• 1:21:00
  Parked in somebody's backyard in Portland, Oregon with a tarp
• 1:21:04
  over it for about 20 years.
• 1:21:06
  Now, when they lifted the tarp, you know what they saw?
• 1:21:09
  Moss.
• 1:21:10
  A mess.
• 1:21:11
  Yeah.
• 1:21:12
  It was rusted.
• 1:21:12
  It was rusted in half and it was sold and it went to the UK.
• 1:21:16
  It's just a mess.
• 1:21:17
  Nobody could make this a car again.
• 1:21:19
  It was sold to someone in France who had it for about 10 years.
• 1:21:22
  And he finally sold to someone in Eastern Europe who collected pre A
• 1:21:26
  cars, but it never owned a speedster.
• 1:21:28
  And he bought it as a parts car.
• 1:21:30
  And then one day, three years ago, his girlfriend gave him a book called
• 1:21:35
  James Dean at Speed by Lee Raskin, which had the VIN number in it, 80126.
• 1:21:41
  And he said, my God, my God, I own this car.
• 1:21:45
  The car is in Eastern Europe.
• 1:21:47
  It's been restored.
• 1:21:48
  It's about to make its debut.
• 1:21:50
  There are some legal problems in the registration because
• 1:21:53
  someone decided to make a bogus speedster with a fake VIN pin.
• 1:21:59
  So there's two VINs with the same number.
• 1:22:01
  I've spent the last two years working with.
• 1:22:04
  This person working with France, working with Italy.
• 1:22:08
  It's a long story.
• 1:22:08
  It's going to be in my new book, but James Dean Speedster is alive and well.
• 1:22:13
  It's going to make a debut pretty soon.
• 1:22:15
  That's awesome.
• 1:22:15
  And you know, that's actually a great segue to talk more about
• 1:22:18
  your research, where you'll be appearing, you know, other shows,
• 1:22:22
  podcasts, books that you've written.
• 1:22:23
  So let's expand upon that for a moment before we get into our closing thoughts.
• 1:22:27
  I was encouraged after writing articles, other people were writing books, they were
• 1:22:31
  paying me for, you know, my content, my archives, you know, some of my friends
• 1:22:35
  said, you know, Lee, you can do the book, you know, you're much better than these
• 1:22:39
  people, you know, and I did, I wrote the book, I went to David Bull, who was a
• 1:22:43
  great publisher, and we worked together, and we came out with James Dean at Speed
• 1:22:47
  in 2005, prior to that, I had worked with Chuck Stoddard, Jim Perrin, Don
• 1:22:54
  Singh, Steve Heinrich, we put together a wonderful book called Porsche Speedster
• 1:23:00
  Type 540 Quintessential Sports Car.
• 1:23:03
  That book today, if you go on eBay, the top end, you might find it for 2, 000.
• 1:23:08
  Maybe you can buy it for 350.
• 1:23:10
  Very rare book.
• 1:23:11
  It is the epitome of what went into the Speedster.
• 1:23:15
  Got all the great stuff from Dr.
• 1:23:17
  Porsche.
• 1:23:18
  Ferry Porsche, Max Huffman's got a lot of original archival detail.
• 1:23:23
  I wrote about the celebrities, James Dean, Paul Newman, Steve
• 1:23:27
  McQueen, Richard Boone, Paladin, he had a Porsche, a few other people.
• 1:23:31
  So, but others wrote about how the Speedster was created.
• 1:23:35
  From there, that was my springboard.
• 1:23:37
  Uh, I wrote about James Dean at speed.
• 1:23:39
  I ended it at the accident on September 30th.
• 1:23:42
  I always knew that I wanted to do something else.
• 1:23:45
  10 years later for the 60th anniversary, I did James Dean on the road to Salinas.
• 1:23:50
  And I really got into heavy detail about the ownership and the accident, the
• 1:23:55
  inquest, the miss facts versus fiction.
• 1:23:58
  It's full of attribution.
• 1:24:00
  It's really good stuff.
• 1:24:01
  And now 10 years later.
• 1:24:03
  I decided to do James Dean and the 356 Speedster because I knew
• 1:24:07
  the Speedster was out there.
• 1:24:08
  So we cover a lot of what I've written about before, but we cover the
• 1:24:12
  restoration of this car, finding the car.
• 1:24:14
  Porsche has never given up on Speedster.
• 1:24:16
  I mean, they, they've made five new variants since the 55 Speedster, you
• 1:24:22
  know, all of a sudden in 59, they decided, you know what, we're not
• 1:24:24
  going to make the Speedster anymore.
• 1:24:26
  They made the convertible D because people complaining.
• 1:24:29
  Not enough creature comforts, they put roll up windows, a nice
• 1:24:33
  convertible top, but the Speedster, or that body, stopped in 1959.
• 1:24:38
  When I bought my Speedster, nobody really cared too much about it.
• 1:24:42
  It was a stripped down car, a lot of them were raced.
• 1:24:44
  I bought mine for 5, 000.
• 1:24:47
  A friend of mine's father passed away.
• 1:24:49
  He's got it on, bring a trailer today.
• 1:24:52
  The last I looked at it, it was 190, 000.
• 1:24:55
  Probably going to sell for 250.
• 1:24:56
  Car that I bought for 6, 000 is worth 250, 000.
• 1:25:00
  Imagine that.
• 1:25:01
  Crazy, isn't it?
• 1:25:01
  Insane.
• 1:25:02
  Insane.
• 1:25:03
  Crazy.
• 1:25:03
  You may have seen my speedster.
• 1:25:05
  I showed it, you know, in Porsche club for years and years and
• 1:25:08
  years and took been best in show.
• 1:25:10
  And then someone came along with a good friend of mine had a little
• 1:25:13
  nicer speedster and, you know, I started finishing second, but.
• 1:25:16
  I had this car for 35 years, a wonderful car.
• 1:25:19
  I rarely drove it.
• 1:25:20
  It only had 4, 000 miles and with my hands on the steering wheel,
• 1:25:23
  just didn't drive it very much.
• 1:25:25
  I was afraid to drive it.
• 1:25:26
  In addition to the books, you've been recently on a bunch of podcasts and
• 1:25:31
  you've been on the History Channel.
• 1:25:32
  Do you want to talk about those as well, where people can find more
• 1:25:35
  parts of this story and other places you've been quote unquote published?
• 1:25:38
  I always wanted to put this James Dean thing down, but it's impossible.
• 1:25:42
  Every day, there's something on the net or I get phone calls or I get an email.
• 1:25:47
  I love doing the podcast.
• 1:25:49
  Like I get to tell the story I've done like three or four of them.
• 1:25:52
  They get better and better and better.
• 1:25:54
  Next week, I'll be going to New York to be interviewed.
• 1:25:57
  Just like you're interviewing me about the curse.
• 1:26:00
  It's going to be for William Shatner's.
• 1:26:03
  episode series called the unexplained and by the history channel.
• 1:26:07
  It's exciting.
• 1:26:08
  I'm very excited about it.
• 1:26:10
  I've done a lot of TV documentaries.
• 1:26:12
  Each one believes that it's going to be the best ever.
• 1:26:16
  Some of them are better than others.
• 1:26:19
  I decided it's about the budget.
• 1:26:20
  It's about how much money you have.
• 1:26:22
  and who you can interview and where you can interview.
• 1:26:25
  There are new facts that I have that I haven't shared yet.
• 1:26:30
  They'll be in my coming book.
• 1:26:32
  There's always something that pops up.
• 1:26:33
  I just saw something the other day.
• 1:26:35
  Somebody sent me an email.
• 1:26:37
  I'm not going to mention a name, but he's published books
• 1:26:39
  about restoration of Porsches.
• 1:26:41
  And he got an email from someone in Germany that has a steering wheel who
• 1:26:45
  says Rolf Wutterich, the mechanic, gave his father this steering wheel.
• 1:26:50
  It's a Spyder steering wheel.
• 1:26:51
  It's fairly rare, probably worth about 10 grand.
• 1:26:54
  But that just popped up and all these things just pop up.
• 1:26:57
  There's always somebody, you know, James Dean's glasses have never been found.
• 1:27:01
  These are his glasses.
• 1:27:03
  I'm wearing his glasses.
• 1:27:04
  These are his frames.
• 1:27:05
  They've been duplicated.
• 1:27:06
  I wear them.
• 1:27:07
  I don't think I'm James Dean when I put them on or take them off, but his
• 1:27:11
  glasses were obliterated in the accident.
• 1:27:14
  So every time I'm at the accident site, I'm sort of pawing the
• 1:27:18
  ground, looking for the glasses.
• 1:27:20
  They're out there somewhere.
• 1:27:22
  Well, he had a pair of racing goggles that I have photos of that.
• 1:27:26
  over his glasses at Palm Springs.
• 1:27:29
  I spoke to his friend Lou Bracker that said they both bought them.
• 1:27:32
  They came with three interchangeable lenses.
• 1:27:34
  One was real dark, one was amber, and one was clear.
• 1:27:38
  At the accident site, one of the witnesses saw the glasses on the ground,
• 1:27:43
  made mention of it in his testimony.
• 1:27:45
  About two years ago, I was contacted by someone at Blackwell's Corner, the person
• 1:27:50
  that owns it, saying that this woman came in saying that her mother was at the
• 1:27:55
  accident site, picked up a hubcap that belonged to the Porsche, which is not true
• 1:27:59
  because the Porsche didn't have a hubcap.
• 1:28:01
  Right.
• 1:28:02
  The Ford did.
• 1:28:03
  And her husband said, don't touch that.
• 1:28:05
  It's an accident scene.
• 1:28:06
  She picked up the goggles and she put them in her pocketbook and took them home.
• 1:28:10
  and kept them and died.
• 1:28:12
  She told her daughter they're James Dean's goggles, racing goggles.
• 1:28:15
  The daughter sold them to the owner of Blackwell's Corner
• 1:28:19
  and they're on display there.
• 1:28:20
  I haven't been offered, but at some point I'm going to
• 1:28:23
  ask the owner if he'll let me.
• 1:28:25
  Try them on.
• 1:28:27
  Now, I am not afraid of any curse.
• 1:28:30
  I'm not afraid that when I put those goggles over my
• 1:28:34
  eyes, that I'm going to die.
• 1:28:36
  I might even see better.
• 1:28:37
  I don't know.
• 1:28:39
  But isn't that amazing?
• 1:28:40
  Two years ago, three years ago, these goggles pop up 60
• 1:28:44
  years later after his death.
• 1:28:45
  So there's always something that happens and there's always
• 1:28:47
  something to write about.
• 1:28:48
  That's the most amazing thing.
• 1:28:50
  Somebody is always coming to me.
• 1:28:51
  I can't give it up.
• 1:28:53
  Here's the most amazing thing, is that we're probably in the midst
• 1:28:57
  now of trying to make a film using a CGI character of James Dean, a James
• 1:29:04
  Dean duo, to create him digitally.
• 1:29:07
  I would be used as the consultant for his mannerisms.
• 1:29:11
  Oh, that's cool.
• 1:29:12
  And I've been involved in the script.
• 1:29:14
  It can go two ways.
• 1:29:15
  It can be James Dean revisiting who he was, or it can be about James Dean, the
• 1:29:22
  artistic genius that I believe that he is, and be a completely new venture.
• 1:29:27
  And it would be good for this generation to see that this
• 1:29:30
  person that was compassionate.
• 1:29:32
  He was artistic, could have been, you know, somebody
• 1:29:35
  really important down the road.
• 1:29:36
  And that's what I would like to see in a film.
• 1:29:39
  So there's a lot going on right now.
• 1:29:40
  Let's close out with one thought.
• 1:29:42
  And it's, I think it's an overarching thought on this entire story.
• 1:29:46
  In the end, it's really important that we highlight The most important aspect
• 1:29:51
  of the James Dean story, which is safety.
• 1:29:54
  A lot of engineering and thought has gone into vehicle design since
• 1:29:58
  1955, keeping drivers and passengers as safe as possible on the roads.
• 1:30:03
  There's also been a lot of advocates for this, both on the commercial
• 1:30:06
  side from folks like Lee Iacocca, on the racing side from folks like Sir
• 1:30:09
  Jackie Stewart, pushing the boundaries to make racing and driving safer.
• 1:30:15
  Even more research has gone into racing cars right into motorsport.
• 1:30:18
  A lot of people don't realize that what happens in the motorsports world does
• 1:30:22
  trickle its way down into passenger cars.
• 1:30:24
  It takes several years to get there, but those advancements in racing
• 1:30:28
  have helped to keep other folks up to their old age and continue to be
• 1:30:32
  these heroes rather than dying because of faulty equipment or reckless.
• 1:30:37
  Dangerment or whatever it might be.
• 1:30:38
  So I just want to remind people that safety is paramount.
• 1:30:42
  We talk about racing and how glamorous it is.
• 1:30:45
  And on this show, episode after episode, the overarching thing
• 1:30:48
  is that there's positives to even tragic stories like James Dean's.
• 1:30:52
  I think it's a significant point.
• 1:30:54
  Something that I've.
• 1:30:55
  thought about.
• 1:30:56
  I see a lot of commentary.
• 1:30:58
  Someone will write a story, you know, it could be Esquire, could be just
• 1:31:02
  some kind of motorsport rag, shows up on, um, you know, on the internet.
• 1:31:06
  And then you have 200 comments.
• 1:31:08
  The comments go from thoughtful to the absurd.
• 1:31:11
  The thoughtful ones are usually from individuals that know a little bit
• 1:31:15
  about James Dean and what happened.
• 1:31:18
  The absurd are from individuals that speculate or just talk about hearsay.
• 1:31:23
  The safety aspect, I hear a lot.
• 1:31:26
  Well, he could have survived if he had been wearing his seatbelt,
• 1:31:30
  if he hadn't been driving so fast.
• 1:31:32
  Those ifs exist in just about every incident.
• 1:31:36
  Where I live in Maryland and most other states, the seatbelt is mandatory.
• 1:31:40
  You get fined if you don't have a seatbelt on.
• 1:31:43
  I've raced for 25 years with a six point belt, with a Snell helmet
• 1:31:47
  that had to be replaced every five or six years, and belts as well.
• 1:31:51
  You don't replace them, you don't get to race with Nomex
• 1:31:55
  clothing and shoes and socks.
• 1:31:57
  And when it's 90 degrees out, I don't mind telling you, and you
• 1:32:01
  probably know it's uncomfortable.
• 1:32:02
  That's for sure.
• 1:32:03
  I've been involved in a couple of incidents.
• 1:32:06
  Fortunately, they were my own incidents.
• 1:32:09
  You know, spinning out, going down a track backwards into an Armco.
• 1:32:12
  Not a lot of fun.
• 1:32:13
  I was never injured or hurt or anything.
• 1:32:16
  Car was damaged.
• 1:32:17
  That's spirit of racing.
• 1:32:19
  But I've also seen fatalities.
• 1:32:21
  In amateur racing at summit point at Sebring, uh, you know, have
• 1:32:25
  I been upside down in a car?
• 1:32:26
  Yes, once, but I would never ever think about racing without the right equipment
• 1:32:32
  because I know what the dangers are.
• 1:32:34
  1955 versus 2022.
• 1:32:37
  We've come a long way.
• 1:32:38
  We wear seatbelts, we have airbags, we have additional structure in
• 1:32:43
  our door panels, energy absorbing parts, we have better brakes,
• 1:32:48
  electronics that warn you of faults, tire pressure, brakes, whatever.
• 1:32:53
  A lot of this has been developed for racing, as you say, and it does
• 1:32:57
  trickle down and it's expensive.
• 1:32:59
  So it has to be incorporated into a car.
• 1:33:00
  And that's why cars are selling on an average of 40, 000 to 50, 000
• 1:33:05
  a piece because of the expense.
• 1:33:07
  When I interviewed some of the racers from James Dean's era that
• 1:33:12
  raced SCCA, They told me that there were deaths all the time.
• 1:33:17
  Why?
• 1:33:18
  Before 1961, there were no roll bars, and when they had roll
• 1:33:22
  bars, they were square roll bars.
• 1:33:23
  They weren't roll bars, but you had to have something there.
• 1:33:26
  Now the roll bar's got to be inspected, it's got to be up
• 1:33:29
  to spec, it's got to be spec'd.
• 1:33:31
  I would never cheat on safety.
• 1:33:32
  If this is what I had to wear, this is what I had to wear.
• 1:33:35
  90 degrees and I was sweating, and I had a mustache and I had to wear a
• 1:33:39
  balaclava, well, that's the way it is.
• 1:33:41
  Cut your mustache off and it's one less thing you wear.
• 1:33:44
  Why?
• 1:33:44
  Well, because it's gonna save you if there's a fire.
• 1:33:47
  I had a fire bottle and pressed the button and hopefully it worked.
• 1:33:50
  Fuel cell?
• 1:33:51
  Of course.
• 1:33:52
  Riders like to say, oh, James Dean died in a fiery crash.
• 1:33:56
  No fire.
• 1:33:56
  Did he have a full tank of gas?
• 1:33:58
  No.
• 1:33:58
  He did not gas up at Blackwell's Corner.
• 1:34:01
  There's a reason for it.
• 1:34:02
  He gassed up at the Mobil station on Ventura Boulevard.
• 1:34:05
  He got free gas.
• 1:34:06
  Mobil gave away free gas.
• 1:34:09
  If you wore their Pegasus, and James Dean wore it proudly, Mobil
• 1:34:13
  gave away free gas at the races.
• 1:34:16
  So you gassed up when you got there, and before you left, you gassed up.
• 1:34:19
  So James Dean had probably less than an eighth of a tank
• 1:34:23
  of gas when the car crashed.
• 1:34:24
  Probably was a savior for him of not having a fire.
• 1:34:29
  The gas tank didn't rupture, but he had very little gas in there.
• 1:34:32
  So if he had a full tank of gas, it may have come out and exploded.
• 1:34:35
  Anyway, we don't know about that.
• 1:34:37
  But that's another reason why we race with fuel cells, because
• 1:34:40
  gasoline has killed more drivers.
• 1:34:42
  Fires have killed more drivers, you know, in the 40s Famous drivers.
• 1:34:48
  I see a lot of conjecture about what if, what if Porsche has capitalized
• 1:34:53
  on James Dean's accident and the accidents of hundreds of other racers.
• 1:34:59
  They've made safer cars.
• 1:35:00
  If you have a fiberglass car, you know, whether it's a Corvette or a Lotus.
• 1:35:04
  You may have a problem.
• 1:35:05
  You don't have the integrity and I've seen these cars come apart in races,
• 1:35:10
  you know, all that's left is the frame.
• 1:35:12
  So yeah, I think there are more injuries, you know, that can happen in
• 1:35:15
  a fiberglass car, but I think racing in general has improved look at NASCAR.
• 1:35:20
  I mean, it's all structural.
• 1:35:21
  It's just a facade around the, you know, a steel structure.
• 1:35:24
  It's as safe as you can get.
• 1:35:26
  Dale Earnhardt's death, freak accident.
• 1:35:28
  He wasn't going that fast.
• 1:35:29
  He just, you know, he just hit it head on.
• 1:35:31
  It was just a trauma.
• 1:35:32
  And there may have been some problems with the seatbelt.
• 1:35:35
  You know, there was some speculation on that.
• 1:35:37
  But as a result, we all wear Hans devices or equivalents now because of that.
• 1:35:40
  That was, yeah, I forgot about the Hans device.
• 1:35:43
  That's something that's not a comfortable thing to wear.
• 1:35:46
  Oh, jeez.
• 1:35:47
  Tell me about it.
• 1:35:48
  And look at the expense.
• 1:35:49
  See, a lot of people look at the expense.
• 1:35:51
  Look at this expense.
• 1:35:52
  They've got to buy a new, you know how many helmets I have?
• 1:35:54
  I'm sure you do too.
• 1:35:55
  I have a big collection of helmets.
• 1:35:57
  You're barely worn, but they're worth every penny though.
• 1:35:59
  At the end of the day, you are my first helmet is actually like a Steve
• 1:36:03
  McQueen bell helmet, the exact same helmet, you know, with the little visor.
• 1:36:07
  The funny thing is it's all friable.
• 1:36:09
  Everything inside is just all junk, you know, it didn't hold up.
• 1:36:13
  Whether it's the humidity or condensation, I don't know, but
• 1:36:16
  that's the life of a helmet.
• 1:36:17
  And then I would see some drivers that would get pissed off and they
• 1:36:20
  would throw their helmet down.
• 1:36:22
  And you know what?
• 1:36:23
  Probably cracked and they were still going to wear it, you know, the next race.
• 1:36:26
  That wasn't a good thing to do.
• 1:36:27
  Yeah, safety is really important.
• 1:36:29
  And I think Porsche has really capitalized and other manufacturers have capitalized.
• 1:36:33
  And we don't really appreciate that for a reason, because we don't think
• 1:36:37
  anything's ever going to happen to us.
• 1:36:39
  We don't think our car is going to have a flat tire and roll over.
• 1:36:43
  But it does happen if you go in 85 or 90 miles an hour and you have a blowout.
• 1:36:47
  It's hard to control.
• 1:36:49
  And that can happen on the street as well as on the racetrack.
• 1:36:51
  So anything can happen.
• 1:36:53
  I've seen this ad.
• 1:36:54
  James Dean would have lived if he was driving a new Porsche.
• 1:36:56
  Something, something similar, silly and similar to that.
• 1:36:59
  I've seen that on the internet.
• 1:37:01
  Well, that's pure bunk.
• 1:37:02
  There's no comparison.
• 1:37:03
  It's apples and oranges.
• 1:37:05
  If you think about it, he was driving the newest Porsche of the time.
• 1:37:08
  That was the cutting edge car at that moment.
• 1:37:11
  It makes no sense.
• 1:37:12
  It's complete bunk.
• 1:37:13
  Getting down to the accident, and I've said this over and over
• 1:37:16
  again, and I actually borrowed this from Jim Barrington.
• 1:37:19
  The accident at the Shillam Junction between two individuals.
• 1:37:23
  They were in a hurry to go somewhere was an unguarded moment.
• 1:37:27
  Just to wrap that whole thought up there before we close out.
• 1:37:31
  I mentioned earlier, you know, with James Dean, his life been different.
• 1:37:35
  Had he chosen a Corvette or chosen, like you said, an Austin or a
• 1:37:39
  Lotus or something else, right?
• 1:37:40
  I would have changed probably the whole course of what we're talking about, but.
• 1:37:43
  In the case of the accident, if you replace the five 50 with a 3 56 like a
• 1:37:48
  coop or even his speedster, I know that they couldn't go as fast as the five 50.
• 1:37:53
  They were heavier.
• 1:37:54
  But would the outcome of the accident been any different had he been in
• 1:37:58
  his speedster versus the five 50?
• 1:38:00
  I know it's total conjecture, total speculation, but
• 1:38:03
  just your thoughts on that.
• 1:38:04
  Well, I think the structure of the 3 56 would've been, uh, more of
• 1:38:07
  a preventive vehicle in terms of being hurt 'cause it had structure.
• 1:38:12
  Look, the Porsche was only 39 inches high and I have a nice photo of the replica
• 1:38:18
  Porsche next to the Ford Custom, 39 inches high and the Ford's twice as tall.
• 1:38:24
  What was, how tall was the 356 in comparison to the 550?
• 1:38:28
  356 is about five feet high.
• 1:38:30
  Speedster would be, um, probably about 45 inches high.
• 1:38:34
  You know, the speedster didn't have a lot of protection either.
• 1:38:37
  The doors were very light.
• 1:38:39
  The 356 scoop had the structure because it, you know, had a top and a frame,
• 1:38:43
  the door frame and the door was heavier.
• 1:38:45
  I think that what we're really talking about, we're talking about
• 1:38:49
  the Ford, which was really a tank.
• 1:38:50
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:38:52
  And so whatever ran against it, you know, there could be some damage, but.
• 1:38:56
  It goes to show you Donald Turnipsey wasn't hurt.
• 1:38:58
  He had a bruised nose.
• 1:39:00
  His head hit the windshield.
• 1:39:02
  His nose hit the steering wheel.
• 1:39:03
  Pretty well protected.
• 1:39:04
  But James Dean had no protection.
• 1:39:06
  Whether it was James Dean or Joe Blow, there probably would have been
• 1:39:10
  a serious injury, if not a fatality.
• 1:39:12
  Here's what I'd like to address.
• 1:39:14
  James Dean was 24.
• 1:39:16
  If this hadn't happened, if James Dean had zagged rather than zigged, in other
• 1:39:21
  words, James Dean went to the right is an instinct because he saw more roadway.
• 1:39:25
  You know, he thought he could get by, but he lost it.
• 1:39:27
  The car came around.
• 1:39:28
  If he had gone to the left, he probably would have missed Donald Terpsey,
• 1:39:31
  but he may have run into the car that was behind Donald Terpsey head on.
• 1:39:35
  Who knows?
• 1:39:36
  It's a millisecond.
• 1:39:37
  I think about this all the time.
• 1:39:39
  What did Donald Turnipseed see?
• 1:39:41
  He saw a car coming.
• 1:39:42
  He had no idea that the car was moving at 85 or 90 miles an hour.
• 1:39:46
  The average person couldn't comprehend that.
• 1:39:49
  A small sports car like that, they'd never seen that before.
• 1:39:52
  I've been in accidents before.
• 1:39:53
  How do they happen?
• 1:39:54
  Boom.
• 1:39:55
  You're lucky if you see it happening.
• 1:39:56
  Most people don't.
• 1:39:57
  It just happens.
• 1:39:58
  I see these videos on, um, you know, my phone all the time.
• 1:40:02
  Accidents where they have a camera in the car and truckers and all
• 1:40:05
  these crazy accidents and you hope it doesn't happen to you.
• 1:40:08
  You hope that you're not there.
• 1:40:10
  They're really terrible.
• 1:40:11
  Most of them are in Europe, but I see them here too.
• 1:40:13
  What I'd like to talk about is that if James Dean had lived, if
• 1:40:17
  there hadn't been an accident, he had raced and he got through that.
• 1:40:20
  I think that James Dean may have had an accident somewhere else a different time.
• 1:40:24
  I think that James Dean was driving over his head.
• 1:40:28
  in a car that he really didn't have any knowledge of.
• 1:40:31
  He needed more seat time in that car.
• 1:40:33
  Most of the drivers say that that car was over his head.
• 1:40:36
  He wasn't ready for it.
• 1:40:38
  And I think that's part of the moral of the story.
• 1:40:40
  That was a point I was going to drive home, that safety is always
• 1:40:43
  paramount, but we talk about it several times on this show and various.
• 1:40:47
  different guises and episodes where the number one mod you should
• 1:40:51
  make to any car is actually seat time before you do anything else.
• 1:40:55
  Learn to drive that car before you modify it or before whatever, because you never
• 1:41:00
  want to have a car be beyond your limit and you need to grow into those vehicles.
• 1:41:04
  But again, this car was new to him.
• 1:41:06
  He was only nine days into it.
• 1:41:07
  And Come to think of how many other mid engine vehicles there were out there.
• 1:41:13
  He was a bit of a pioneer.
• 1:41:15
  There weren't too many that were, you know, road legal that
• 1:41:18
  were just out there and about.
• 1:41:19
  So it was all new territory, but unfortunately he was taken away too soon
• 1:41:24
  and it makes it a sad and tragic story.
• 1:41:26
  So, you know, as we're talking about this.
• 1:41:28
  And closing out, who knows what his racing career could have been like.
• 1:41:32
  Had he made it to that race in Salinas the next day, would he have won?
• 1:41:36
  Would he have given up on acting altogether and jumped head first into
• 1:41:39
  racing for the rest of his career?
• 1:41:40
  Who knows?
• 1:41:41
  Many other actors have flirted with racing names like Steve McQueen.
• 1:41:45
  You mentioned Patrick Densi, Michael Fassbender, Paul Newman, which we
• 1:41:48
  talked about just to name a few.
• 1:41:50
  Allegedly James Dean's dream was to compete in the Indy 500.
• 1:41:54
  Had the crash not happened, maybe we wouldn't be speaking about
• 1:41:57
  James Dean, the actor, but rather James Dean, the Indy 500 winner.
• 1:42:02
  Unfortunately, we'll never know.
• 1:42:04
  All we do know is that a young and talented life was taken from us way
• 1:42:09
  too soon, and the motorsports history books are at a loss without them.
• 1:42:13
  Or are they?
• 1:42:14
  Because Lee has been filling in the gaps.
• 1:42:16
  I agree with you.
• 1:42:17
  And I've written about this just recently.
• 1:42:19
  Unfortunately, the James Dean story usually ends with his tragic death.
• 1:42:25
  I see James Dean as an artistic genius.
• 1:42:28
  I think that he was, he was interested in photography, directing.
• 1:42:33
  I think that he was a superb actor.
• 1:42:35
  He really understood the method acting.
• 1:42:37
  And I think that he was well ahead of his time in terms of racing.
• 1:42:42
  I would have hoped that, you know, he would have been successful with the 550.
• 1:42:45
  Perhaps he would have realized that Salinas, that he wasn't going
• 1:42:49
  to be a winner, that he needed more time to be more patient.
• 1:42:53
  I would have hoped that that would have happened.
• 1:42:55
  It didn't happen.
• 1:42:56
  The one thing that I've come away with recently is that James Dean
• 1:43:00
  as an actor slash racer was really the first celebrity for Porsche.
• 1:43:06
  To have won, to been on the podium, back to back races, despite what a lot of
• 1:43:12
  people thought would be grandstanding or for publicity, he was the real deal.
• 1:43:17
  And he really did promote, despite his death in a Porsche, he really has promoted
• 1:43:23
  The spirit and the legacy of Porsche's racing by what he accomplished in the
• 1:43:28
  months of March through May of 1955, he was a pioneer and he was successful
• 1:43:34
  at it and you can't take that away.
• 1:43:36
  And that's something that I'd like to promote a little bit more, especially
• 1:43:40
  now, since we have found his speedster and hopefully we can bring that car over from
• 1:43:45
  Europe and we can bring it to, you know, Amelia Island or some Porsche events.
• 1:43:50
  And people can actually see what the car was like and put back.
• 1:43:54
  It's completely authentic.
• 1:43:56
  Now, I wouldn't say that it's a monument, but it's certainly a tribute
• 1:44:01
  to James Dean, what he accomplished.
• 1:44:03
  And I would hope that Porsche, you know, we'll finally recognize that.
• 1:44:06
  And get on board where, where I'm headed.
• 1:44:09
  I hope that they will.
• 1:44:10
  So Lee, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show.
• 1:44:12
  This has been fantastic.
• 1:44:14
  This has been an education and this is yet another story in the
• 1:44:18
  corners and the depths of motorsport where it ties us all together.
• 1:44:22
  It brings us together and it gets us thinking, right?
• 1:44:24
  And this is why we enjoy doing these types of episodes with folks like
• 1:44:27
  yourself to remind us that there's more than just turning laps when we
• 1:44:32
  talk about the motorsports world.
• 1:44:34
  So thank you.
• 1:44:34
  I want to thank you.
• 1:44:35
  It's good seeing you again and I want to thank you for your energy and your energy
• 1:44:42
  brought out, you know, my enthusiasm.
• 1:44:44
  I love talking about this.
• 1:44:46
  I think that there's a generation out there that would love to know more
• 1:44:50
  about James Dean and you're bringing it to them and I commend you on that.
• 1:44:54
  So again, Lee, thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 1:44:56
  This has been absolutely fantastic.
• 1:44:58
  And maybe we'll follow up with you soon to see where this story progresses, because
• 1:45:03
  as you said, it never seems to end.
• 1:45:05
  So no, it won't, it won't end.
• 1:45:07
  It's going to, it's going to go.
• 1:45:08
  I've always said, James Dean lives on.
• 1:45:15
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• 1:45:16
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• 1:45:23
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• 1:45:27
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• 1:45:32
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• 1:45:42
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• 1:45:42
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• 1:45:43
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• 1:45:46
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• 1:45:58
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• 1:46:00
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• 1:46:03
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