Kommt das "a car crash" eigentlich ohne ein "like" davor aus in dieser Bedeutung ?

Ja, wohl sogar normalerweise. "a real car crash" ist z.B. sehr gängig, ohne like.

Was meint ihr denn generell zu den beiden Einträgen? Ich sehe keinen Grund dafür, zwei unterschiedliche zu haben. Eher könnte "einziger" (etc.) auf "einzig" umleiten. Wenn es den Eintrag gar nicht gibt, würde man aber "einzig" auch direkt unter den möglichen Grundformen finden, oder?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/e...

[ usually singular ] mainly UK informal

something that fails completely or goes extremely badly:

At that time my private life was a car crash.

It could have been an absolute car crash but Dolores stepped in and saved the day.

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/de...

​(informal) a very unsuccessful event or situation that people often find interesting

• Her life is turning into a car crash.
• The whole industry is a car crash—even major investment won’t save it now.
• car-crash television

https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionar...

something that is completely unsuccessful

The show will either be a smash hit or a complete car crash.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/...

2.  informalsomething or someone that has suffered ruin or calamity

I don't know where you've got it from that car crash is an American expression -- it's in all the UK dictionaries and Cambridge even tags it 'mainly UK informal', suggesting 'dumpster fire' (which I've never heard) and 'train wreck' (which I have) as US equivalents. In this thread (Siehe auch: car crash (interview)) hm--us asks whether 'car crash is figuratively in BE perhaps the equivalent of 'train wreck' in AE? Meaning a total and embarrassing failure'.

(I don't think train wreck is chiefly Amer., though; that would be understood and used in the UK too.)

https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/292528?redirec...

 2. figurative. Something which is disastrous, messy, chaotic, or embarrassing, esp. in a manner which compels one's attention. Frequently with of.

1992   USA Today 16 Oct. 1 b/3  IBM has slashed its manufacturing capacity a whopping 40% since 1989... ‘It's a car crash in slow motion that's going to last for two to three more years.’

1993   Musical Times Jan. 53/3  John Mayer's embarrassing Kriti, a cross-cultural car crash of a piece mixing tanpuras with Brideshead revisited, was simply dreadful.

2001   M. Blake 24 Karat Schmooze vii. 72  He read out the label in a French accent that was a car crash of aspirated vowels and glottal stops.

2007   R. Coleman Mommy by Mistake (2009) 268  You are..far, far too nice and kind to get involved with me and my car crash of a life.

 Chiefly British (in sense 2).

 a. attributive. Designating television that is considered to be gratuitously shocking or sensational, or of embarrassingly poor quality (in terms of dialogue, acting, etc.).

1993   Daily Mail 16 Jan. 35/4  He knows that millions of TV fans..love the tackiness of this so-called ‘car crash television’, although he's not entirely sure why.

1995   Herald (Glasgow) (Nexis) 8 June 13  Channel 4 was yesterday reminded that car-crash television is not without its drawbacks when The Word was issued with a formal warning by the Independent Television Commission.

2009   A. Field Discovering Statistics (ed. 3) xiii. 463  It's cruel, voyeuristic, gratuitous, car crash TV, and I love it.

  b. General attributive.

1997   Select June 119/4  Add to that..the car-crash spectacle of his xenophobia..and not going down the pub suddenly becomes a viable proposition.

2002   A. Holmes Sleb ii. 16  It's the English version of Jerry Springer, where guests with car-crash private lives are ferried on to make the rest of us feel happier about ours.

2007   Daily Record (Glasgow) (Nexis) 24 Feb. 3  The star, once nearly as famed for her car-crash fashion sense as for her vocal talents.

2010   Scotsman (Nexis) 28 Sept. 68  The club's own official website did not mince its words when describing the defeat a day earlier as a ‘car crash performance’.

Sorry reverend, this doesn't answer your einzig question. But here's the OED on 'car crash', too.

Ok, I give up on car crash. Obviously a misperception on my side.