History James Deans "Little Bastard"

A real 4-Cam spyder engine...


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man that 4 cam engine sounds insane , no wonder those cars were fast

 

I guess that it was used in the movies.... I just thought that you guys would like to see the car .

 

No shit really.

 

Thanks for showing us the pics. That is one of my fav kitcars.

 

I'd love to have that car! Lucky Bastard... or is it Little Bastard.. Poor suffering Bastard? Seriously though, James Dean and the Little Bastard... 2 icons and 2 legends.

 

They are great looking cars.

Here's another photo of an original Spyder motor, freshly pulled from a wrecked Spyder back in the 1950's.

 

Three little words: Gear Driven Camshafts.

 

Ryan clams to have seen it. It is on another thread.

 

Looks like real paint to me.

 

It IS real paint.

 

I noticed that too!

 

Nice!

 

I built a Beck 550 20 odd years ago. It was an amazing ride. My interests gravitated back to hot rods and it sat in my shop for many years. A couple of years ago I let it go to a new home in Georgia. My wife rode in it a couple of times. Funny story. We were living in Miami and decided to drive down to the Keys for dinner. On US 1 near Homestead we pulled up next to an 18 wheeler. My love looked over and saw her reflection in a hubcap and said "Take me home." She does not have the same sense of vulnerability in my roadster and neither do I.


Beck 550 01 by Bib Overalls, on Flickr

 

I saw remains of "The Jame Dean car" at a car show at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in the very early '60s, mostly the back of it....(it was a cool show, Norm Grabowski's T was there).

Of course there were lots of fakes and this could well have been one of them...

This replica is really cool, must have been fun to sit in it...

 

Bib, had i known we would have made a deal!

 

I saw one the other day while filling up at a local gas station It had dealer plates from a very high end dealer here that mostly cater to pro atheletes and other very wealthy types. It sounded very serious almost like an open header, I think it might have had a boxer engine in it.

 

I have one of these they are a lot of fun. we are rebuilding the carbs right now its wicked fast 2100CC and if your nuts you can slap a WRX suburu engine in them and scare the piss out of yourself but its not a HAMB friendly car, so i dont talk about it in fact I didnt make this post either. I have seend prolly 10-15 real ones in carmel/monterey over the years, they are all really awesome, but the prices of the real deal of which they only made 50 or so of them are over 1 mil and up to 4 mil for race ones with history. so.. I settled for the Replica too LOL.

 

Here's a pic of my friend Jim Barron's "little bastard"...It's a Beck and powered by Porsche...been to the James Dean Memorial Run several times and the 2010 KKOA event in Salina, Ks. A very nice restoration done by Jim at his home shop and is driven often....only trouble I can't get in the passenger seat with the top up, so he has to lay it back until I get in! And believe me, we've needed the top up several times at Fairmont traveling early morning from Kokomo!

 

At least once a year I get an email from the buyer telling me how happy he is with it. I advertised it for sale on a 550 forum. Would have advertised it here but did not think there would be interest.