Ricks Fitch Firebird...very rare Bird

[Belair62]

Bob, Here's the story & pictures. Thanks, Rick


First a little background on John Fitch. John is about 87yrs old. He built his first car in his college years, it was a tube chassis with a Desoto flathead. Then he was off to Europe for WWII as a P51 fighter pilot. After the war he
built his next cars, a modified Crosley Hotshot body powered by a Ford flathead, and then a rebodied Jag XK120.
He was the 1st SCCA national champion driver. Drove for Briggs Cunningham in the US and at LeMans.
In the early to mid-fifties was a driver for the Mercedes factory sports car team.

Ed Cole at GM hired him to run a factory Corvette race team at Sebring in 56 and or 57. After that he started John
Fitch & CO. in Falls Villiage CT, his big thing was making modified Corvairs called Sprints. They were availiable
throught certain Chevy dealers, similiar to Yenko's. He also tweaked other cars such as a 67 Olds, some VW's.

He later became involed in automotive safety barriers. You may have seem the yellow crash sand barrels along
roads in a triangle arrangement, that's one his inventions. Today he's still an innovator working on more crash
barriers, fuel catalyst,and liquid cooled brakes among other things. I've glossed over alot of thing here, he's quite
an interesting man.

Fitch knew John DeLorean who was running Pontiac in 1967 and DeLorean sent Fitch 1 400ci Firebird and 1 OHC
6 cylinder with a four barrel (Pontiac Sprint engine) to play around with as an engineering exercise. When he was
done with the 2 cars they where brought back to Pontiac for the evaluation and also to Lime Rock race track in CT.
The Fitch cars ran back to back tests with Pontiac engineering dept cars called PFST. At the end of the tests Fitch felt his car was better suited for everyday street driving while the Pontiac PFST wasn't real a street car, more of a
race car. I think after the test Pontiac gave Fitch the cars back and they kind of parted ways the way I've heard the story. Fitch said in a old Special Interest Auto interview "Herb (Adams Pontiac engineer in charge of the
PFST program) still liked his and I liked mine.". I think Fitch felt his cars worked fine for what he intended them to be,
more of a sport car then a race car. My understanding is Pontiac never backed the Fitch car program other than send
Fitch the first 2 cars, and Fitch busy with his other projects at the time, never really marketed them other than a few
magazine road tests. Fitch doesn't remember how many cars he made in the end, it seem to be around 6-8 cars, all 400ci engines except the 1 OHC Sprint.

My car is the OHC Sprint engine car. For factory options my car has rally gages, console, tilt, wood wheel, deluxe
interior, 4 speed, am/fm, hood tach, rally wheels, tinted glass, power disc brakes, and radial tires (actual option
on Firebirds in 67). For Fitch mods there's Koni Front shocks, Lucas Flame thrower driving light, mesh in front of
the light/grill, adjusted caster, rubber bumpers on the shaft of the front shocks (to change spring rate), re-valved
steering and brakes, headlight flasher switch, one time wiper switch, light monitoring panel, leather steering wheel
cover, Judson coil, dual exhaust, and the fins an the quater panels (they were to cooling the brakes and let air into
the interior but never developed). Also for the 6 cylinder car Fitch want to supercharge it, but never actually
developed it. A fitch opted car would sell for about $1000 more than the sticker price on a car.

The car was fairly solid when I bought it in the late 80's except for the trunk which was rotted bad because the fins
let alot of water leak in. The floors and doors were good.I had to replace the roof skin because someone put a moon
sun roof in at some point. The interior is all original except the rug and headliner. The car was missing the mesh covers and light monitoring panel, I recreated them from pictures and by talking to Fitch.

I found 2 broadcast sheet in the car both say "Tag Fitch & Co." and the Pontiac PHS billing card shows it was
paid for by the Engineering department of Pontiac.

-Rick

[68l30]

That is one COOL Bird! Very nice job on the resto!


Steve

[Belair62]

This is a very unusual car....very cool....never saw one before....Rick if you send me another pic of that sail panel i will try re-post...this Photbucket is starting to tick me off..

[Mr70]

NICE!

[Xplantdad]

Hey Rick,

Really cool car! I never knew that something like this existed. I've learned a lot since joining this forum.

Thanks for sharing!


Bruce

[Chevy454]

That thing looks wild! Kinda has an AMX look to it with the fins...did those OHC-6 cars originally come with dual exhaust and the 4-barrel? How does it run?

[mmcporter]

Wonderful car and story. I've been interested in these Fitch 'Birds ever since "Cars and Parts" did a story on them 10 or 15 years ago. There cannot be many of these left as there weren't many to begin with. What a well-rounded car in the grand touring tradition.

Morris

[JoeG]

Car--A real piece of Pontiac History---It must be a fun car to drive on the open road-------------

[Rick]

Thanks for the compliments on the car.The resto was done 12yrs ago and it's held up pretty good except the engine paint. It does look like a big AMX from the side, somedays I think it looks cool, anothers I wonder... but it's different for better or worse.

Pontiac offered the OHC in 2 versions, the base was 165hp 1 barrel carb engine, the other was the Sprint 4 barrel with 215hp. Pontiac never offered dual exhaust on either, Fitch added the dual exhaust.

The OHC Sprint (4 barrel) engine runs great with the 4 speed (They say autos are dogs),the 4 speed has a 3.11 first gear and the Sprint engine redlines at 6500rpm, so it suprises alot of people because it gets up & goes pretty good but it tops out were a high horse V8 keeps going.

A few of the Fitch cars have shown up from time to time, but they seem to disappear again. I talked to an original owner of one of the Fitch 400ci cars, she sold in the late 80's to someone in the mid-west haven't been able to find it. She also said she thought Fitch sold one to someone in Italy. There was another that was for sale at the Pomona CA swap meet about 7yrs ago, I here that it might be in the Long Beach area now. Also in the early 80's in Tampa or Daytona Fl, there was one for sale.

Fitch was trying to make a euro GT type car. He was even going to make a supercharger for the OHC package but never followed though on it. He actually liked the OHC engine car better because there was less weight up front which helped the handling over the 400ci cars. He felt the OHC with the supercharger would have been enough for 99% demand made on it.

[1967Z28]

Rick,

The car is awesome. <u>Thanks</u> for posting the story and pictures. Not a whole lot is known about John Fitch to the average car fan so that is a great mini-history lesson. Is there any chance of seeing a pic of the front showing the mesh over the headlights and maybe one from straight behind? If I ever run across that one from Pomona again, I will let you know.

-Jon