The Porsche 550 Spyder in which actor James Dean was killed may have been found after being lost for 55 years,
ABC 7 in Chicago reports.
The movie star died in a head-on collision on September 30, 1955 at age 24 driving the car on a public road to a race he intended to drive it in.
The car was totaled, and one of his competitors bought the engine and other parts, leaving the crumpled body to auto restorer George Barris.
Barris opted not to restore the vehicle, but loaned it out to the National Safety Council for automobile safety promotions and car shows.
It came up missing while being shipped to Los Angeles from Miami in 1960.
On the 50th anniversary of Dean's death in 2005, Chicago's Volo Auto Museum offered to purchase the car for $1 million. That brought in several leads, the best of which was a man in Whatcom County, Washington, who claimed to have seen the Porsche hidden behind a false wall when he was a child.
The man, who has not been identified publicly, passed a lie detector test, but doesn't own the building where the car supposedly is hidden. Talks are ongoing with the building's owner about the $1 million offer, which still stands.
However, Barris, who is now 89 years old, likely has his own claim of ownership since there is no paperwork transferring ownership from him to anyone else, the museum's director Brian Grams
told Fox News.
"This guy's story is awesome, and our most believable lead to date," Grams told ABC 7. "It's kind of like Al Capone's vault. If it is in there, it continues the legend of this car's notorious history."
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