James Dean and the Porsche 356 Speedster: Love at First Sight

James Dean was associated with two iconic Porsche cars during his brief but spectacular life. The second was a newly purchased 550 Spyder in which he crashed and died on September 30, 1955. But his first Porsche was a 1955 Speedster—a car he used to compete in Southern California’s emerging sports car racing scene, and that raised the German automaker’s profile with enthusiast drivers in the United States.

The whereabouts of both cars have long been shrouded in mystery, and the crashed Spyder is considered lost to time. Now, after years of Sherlock Holmes-like detective work and research, author and James Dean expert Lee Raskin has tracked down the actor’s long-lost Speedster.

In James Dean and the Porsche 356 Speedster, Raskin details Dean’s complete exploits with his Speedster, including his racing results, and then traces its path over the subsequent decades through to its rediscovery and restoration.