James Dean's 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder was one of 90 built between 1953 and 1956. He traded in his 356 Super Speedster for it and planned to enter the Salinas Road Race later that year. This ultralight, race-prepped car had a 110 hp DOHC flat 4 and was capable of 140 mph. It was rather skittish at high speeds and the thin light weight aluminum body tended to crumple like a candy wrapper on impact. He had that fatal impact on September 30,1955, one day before the road race. The "Little Bastard" moniker and numbers were applied by Dean Jeffries whose shop was next door to the Barris Brothers Customs. The red tail stripes were applied at the Porsche factory for race day identification.

This model is one of CMC's early releases and is a bit crude compared to their later products. I tried to create a reasonable James Dean figure and, with a little imagination, you can see where I tried to go.