Ricks Fitch Firebird...very rare Bird

[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

[TDW]

Rick...that is a real nice car. First one I have seen. I really like it.

[Rick]

Jon,
I have pictures of what your looking for, I need to figure out why my scanner doesn't want to work. Or after we get our 10"-18" of snow tomorrow I'll try to take some digital pics.

There's a lot more interesting Fitch info out there, I have about 10 different magazine article's and both his bio's he's written. Lot's of good reading on the different cars he's done, auto safety projects and so on.

[Rick]

Finally got the scanner to work... so I scanned a few pictures.
Jon, here's a picture from behind.

[Rick]

Here's one of the front screen. The screen is hard to made out, I hard to remake that and it's thinner than the original so it washes out in pictures.

[Rick]

Here' one of John Fitch with the car at Lime Rock race track in 2000 or 2001.