The Survivor Car Curse, Explained

Whether you're watching the best seasons of "Survivor" or the worst, there's one thing they all have in common: the car curse. The curse is something that longtime "Survivor" fans are probably intimately familiar with, but newer fans who started watching after the Jeff Probst-hosted show stopped handing out cars as prizes might be playing catch-up.

The curse is a lot less scary than it sounds, even though it's been 100% unavoidable through "Survivor" history. Put simply, every single contestant who has won a car on the show has gone on to lose the game overall. The curse is especially notable because the car prize wasn't given out until most of the players had already been eliminated. That means the best players in each season were competing for the car, but whoever took it home was guaranteed to lose the show.

Is the car curse caused by some supernatural entity haunting the "Survivor" franchise, or just a strange coincidence that fans have blown out of proportion? The curse's history is eerily long, and its victims have different opinions on the matter.

Don't worry if you've forgotten all about "Survivor" Season 1, because the car curse began in Season 2, "Survivor: The Australian Outback." Colby Donaldson was the first person to win a car on the show, and he won his prize — a Pontiac Aztek — on day 37. Donaldson, who'd never owned a new car before, was overjoyed at winning, but his run on the show soon turned sour: At the very end, Donaldson got second place, and the car curse was born.

In the very next season, "Survivor: Africa," Lex van de Berghe won a Chevrolet Avalanche on day 35 and finished third in the season overall. In the fourth season of "Survivor," Sean Rector won a vehicle and finished the show in fifth place, while in the very next season Ted Rogers Jr. won an automobile and also finished in fifth.

The curse continued for every single season until "Survivor: Fiji." That season, Yau-man Chan won the car and traded it to his fellow competitor Dreamz Herd in exchange for an Immunity Necklace. Herd later went back on the deal, and Chan finished the season in fourth place. Unfortunately for Herd, the curse still reached out to him, and he tied for second place. After that double victim season, "Survivor" made one of its many changes and stopped offering the car prize altogether.

At this point the "Survivor" car curse is part of the show's deep lore. The curse doesn't plague the show today, so more recent fans might not even be aware of it. The only people who will never forget about the curse are the participants it impacted in the first place.

In 2025, Entertainment Weekly spoke to some of the former "Survivor" contestants who had supposedly been struck by the car curse. Colby Donaldson, the first victim of the curse, hadn't even heard of it, and for what it's worth, he traded in his prize Pontiac Aztek for a GMC. Lex van de Berghe wasn't sold on the curse, saying, "I don't really hold much stock in those things, but I do think that winning a high dollar item on a show where people get to decide if you stay or go is risky."

What about Dreamz Herd, the last victim of the car curse? He thinks along the same lines as van de Berghe. "This is what I see it as. We're all playing a game for a million dollars," Herd said. "Once you win a prize of any money, everybody's like, 'Well, he already has this portion. So you can't let him get too much.'" Supernatural forces simply can't hold a candle to the competitive nature of "Survivor" finalists.