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Originally Posted by ChrisZang
Hmmmmm,
at this time this WAS an ultra powerful race car that was hard to handle.
Porsche actually sent an engineer to train James Dean on how to handle the car. Dean had raced 356es before and that was the first time for him to take a 550 to the race track (It's always referred to as "Salinas", which I guess makes it Laguna Seca). Due to his celebrity he actually got priority in the waiting list for the car.
The engineer was sitting in the passenger seat next to James Dean at the time of the accident but was thrown from the car and survived (I believe with minor injuries).
I think the "hard to handle" part comes from the fact that the suspension that was used on the 550 was, well state of the art in the 50 ies, but had the tendency to snap within split seconds from understeer to severe oversteer and then the car turned into a handful, especially in the hand of an inexperienced driver.
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Yes, James Dan was actualy on his way to a race after just picking up his new car only hours earlier that morning. His personal mechanic/engineer was thrown from the car and received a few broken ribs. Dean died instantly when the larger than life steering wheel broke his neck upon impact with the other car just before ejecting the mechanic and doing a seriers of tumbles and sumersults into the air. It finaly came to rest at a telephone pole. Dean had also received a speeding ticket just a few hours earlier that day. However, the mechanic said Dean was not speeding at the time of the accident, and that the the driver of the the Ford that turned infront of them was unexpected and unavoidable. By the way, I'm a huge James Dean fan and thats how I know all this info.
Here are some pitures of Dean's 550 Sypder with Red stripes on the rear. There were different colors used to signify different meanings for the drivers and car owners. Red meant engineer/mechanic, while yellow, green and blue were also used. I'm not sure what the other colors meant.
Dean also had the name "Little Bastard" painted on the back of his car. It was a nickname that the producer gave him while working on the set of Giant the movie. Dean felt it was a good name since his father told him one day that he may not be his real father, hence the nickname.
