The "curse" of James Dean's Spyder Porsche

[Nadme]

I'd heard about "the curse" of this car, but didn't know all these details. This was on Hollywood Myths & Legends last evening (TVLand channel) and everything presented on that show is in this online article, with the exception of Sir Alec Guiness having warned James Dean that the car felt "sinister" to him and that he'd be dead within a week...:

http://www.qsl.net/w5www/dean.html

Calm down eggheads ( ). I'm not saying there IS a curse. But this definitely is eerie.

[LotusExcelle]

Small fast car with no rollover protection. Car accident. Nothing eerie about it - just an accident.

[Nadme]

Small fast car with no rollover protection. Car accident. Nothing eerie about it - just an accident.

Naw, really?

You didn't read the article, did you? All the subsequent events which occurred after the accident -- associated with the wreckage and spare parts, etc.

{extra disclaimer: Again, I'm not saying there is/was a curse. But it is "interesting"}

[LotusExcelle]

Still not eerie. If you knew the history of my sledgehammer you wouldn't sleep at night. but its just a sledgehammer.

[Nadme]

Your sledgehammer has a similar history to this car? Wow...(I doubt it).

You obviously have dismissed the matter entirely out of hand. Thanks for chiming in.

Next?

[LotusExcelle]

no I read the link. I see no confirming references to any of the incidents it mentions. I'm not saying they didn't happen - I'm saying this sounds an awful lot like an urban legend series.

This is a bad analogy but is a Lemon Law car cursed too? Or is it just built and fixed wrong?

[Nadme]

This is a bad analogy but is a Lemon Law car cursed too? Or is it just built and fixed wrong?

If there are a lot of troubles within the car itself and nothing "untoward" -- much less a string of "untoward" events -- occurring after, then I'd say it's just a lemon.

But Dean's car? Even its parts after the wreck are involved in wrecks, injuries, death. The bit about what remained surviving a fire while everything else around it burned/was destroyed?

The TV program didn't provide documentation; but it's a 1/2-hour magazine-type show which doesn't. There has been other material presented about this car, surely there is documentation to be found. This online article confirms last night's TV program (with the exception of Alec Guiness' comments to Dean).

Was the car cursed? Let's just say I prefer to think it's simply a rash of very nasty coincidences; however, I wouldn't touch that thing with a 10-foot pole if it were found again.

[Gillianren]

http://www.snopes.com/autos/cursed/spyder.asp

In short, there's a reason most of it isn't documented. Made-up stuff seldom is.

[Nadme]

http://www.snopes.com/autos/cursed/spyder.asp

In short, there's a reason most of it isn't documented. Made-up stuff seldom is.

Uh...your article doesn't exactly debunk.

You decide.

(article)

No decision made. I simply find it curious and am willing to see the "facts" presented actually debunked.

[Gillianren]

You'll note that they don't even mention half the "facts" your article mentions, and there are several that are left in serious doubt.

[nauthiz]

I'd want to see more documentation before believing the facts of this story - newspaper articles and whatnot. There are so many legends like this where many elements are manufactured or exaggerated in order to conjure an interesting story.

The "curse" of King Tut's tomb comes to mind. Stories about it invariably gloss over minor ( ) details such as that so-and-so's supposedly mysterious death happened a decade later when the person had already lived well past the average life expectancy of the time and in an era when the state of the art in medical diagnostics wasn't nearly what it is today.