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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Originally Posted by Perfectlap
I always had this false impression that the 550 James Dean died in was some ultra powerful racing car that was hard to handle.
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