John Cooper Fitch (4 August 1917 in Indianapolis, Indiana – 31 October 2012) was an American racing driver and inventor. He was the first American to race automobiles successfully in Europe in the post-war era. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephan Latham
John Cooper Fitch was an ocean racer, a fighter pilot and test pilot, a race driver, a team manager, race course director, prolific inventor, highway safety expert, automaker, and entrepreneur. Althoug his first passion was airplanes, not cars, he went on to have a racing career during the 1950s and 1960s that included driving for Mercedes-Benz and the Briggs Cunningham team, with major wins in the Grand Prix of Argentina, the Tourist Trophy and Sebring plus he also raced six times at Le Mans, finishing as high as third though only contested two Grands Prix, in 1953 and 1955 at Monza. He was the first racing team manager for Corvette in 1956 and 1957 plus the first general manager of Lime Rock race course. In 1955, Mercedes selected Pierre Levegh to partner him in the third 300 SLR at Le Mans and at the time of the accident he was in the team trailer, just behind the pit wall, having a last-minute cup of coffee before taking over from the car. Upon hearing the explosion, he went outside and after helping some injured gendarmes and journalists then returned to the trailer. But before he could deliver the news to Pierre’s wife, “I suppose my grim face must have told it all, for I didn’t have to speak, Madame Levegh nodded slowly ‘I know, Fitch. It was Pierre. He is dead. I know he is dead.’” He then rang home to inform his family that he had not been behind the wheel of the car, as some initial reports had suggested. He became aware of the scale of the disaster and the death toll and asked Rudi Uhlenhaut, the SLR’s designer, to insist to the Daimler-Benz board that they withdraw the remaining Mercedes from the race. Fangio and Moss had taken an unassailable lead but Uhlenhaut and team boss Alfred Neubauer agreed to his proposal and after talks at the Mercedes headquarters in Stuttgart word came in the small hours of Sunday morning that their remaining cars should be withdrawn. The disaster led him to begin working towards mitigating future catastrophe, stating “the Le Mans crash affected me, as it did everybody, but me probably more so..I worried about it for years: how do you stop an errant vehicle from high speed in a very small space without killing the occupants?” He threw himself into developing vehicle safety standards and became active in crusading for increased safety on racetracks and highways, joining with medical experts such as Steve Olvey and Terry Trammel, engineers such as Bill Milliken and Karl Ludvigsen, and journalists including Chris Economaki and Brock Yates, as well as many of his racing driver friends. He went on to serve as consultant to numerous research and governmental organisations on the subject of vehicle handling and dynamics, as they relate to safety, served as technical consultant for the film The Racers and was a design consultant for many racetracks, including Mosport, Watkins Glen and Lime Rock Park. Besides his association with Lime Rock Park, he founded or was associated at a high level with several companies, including John Fitch & Co., Inc., Advanced Power Systems International, Race Safety Inc., Impact Attenuation, Inc., Impact Dynamics, LLC., Roadway Safety Service Inc., DeConti Industries Inc., Consulier Industries Inc. and Highway Safety Research Corp.
John was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, August 4, 1917, and was a descendent of John Fitch, the inventor of the steamboat and his step-father was an executive with the Stutz car company and introduced him at a young age to automobiles and engineering. However, after he introduced his young stepson to racing at Indianapolis, John declared “A bunch of cars going around in a circle. What’s the point?.” In the late thirties, he went from the Kentucky Military Institute to Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and studied civil engineering for a year, later saying he had learned just enough engineering to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish. He bought an Indian motorcycle and rode it to New Orleans, where he traded it for a Fiat 500 automobile and drove it to New York, stopping only for gas. In 1939, he used a small inheritance to board a freighter for Europe and found his way to London, where he fell in love with a ballet dancer and for a time lived in grain barges on the Thames. Returning to America, he sailed around the Gulf of Mexico in a 32-foot schooner from Sarasota to New Orleans and in 1941 he volunteered in the Army Air Corps. He later served as a P-51 pilot in the Fourth Fighter Group on bomber escort missions though after 4 years of combat duty, in 1944 he was shot down while strafing a munitions train and spent several months as a prisoner of war. Once back in America after the War he settled in Palm Beach, Florida, where he socialised with Orville Wright, Noel Coward and several of the Kennedys. While there he started racing yachts and told how, at one event, he met the Duke of Windsor (they were relieving themselves on a bush at the time) and the Duke became a friend.
He had developed an interest in road racing, having witnessed a race at Brooklands in Britain and began racing with an MG-TC. He did not qualify in 1948 at Watkins Glen though in the following year was fifth at Bridgehampton and fifth and sixth at Watkins Glen. In 1950, he built and raced a Fiat 1100 with a small Ford Flathead engine tuned for midget racing, which he soon modified into the ‘Fitch Model B’ by adding a Crosley body. He raced a variety of cars during the year and results included two eighth places with the MG at Palm Beach and his Fitch Model B at Watkins Glen, second with an MG TD at Linden and eighteenth in a shared Jaguar XK120 drive with John Whitmore at the Sebring 6 Hours. In the early 50s he also raced his ‘Fitch-Whitmore’ Jaguar, an XK120 with 800 pounds of bodywork replaced with lightweight aluminium.
In 1951, on his first overseas race, he won the Peron Grand Prix sports car race in Buenos Aires. Unable to afford a competitive car he obtained an Allard that had been wrecked in a previous race, telling how “the frame was bent so I secured it to an oak tree with a chain and kept backing up till it was reasonably straight.” General Juan Peron awarded him membership in the Peronista Party while Evita gave him a trophy and a kiss. Briggs Cunningham took him into his sports car team and he was fourth in a Cunningham C-1 at a Mt.Equinox Hillclimb while C2-R drives brought victory at Elkhart Lake and two second place finishes at Watkins Glen. He was fourth in two races in June at Bridgehampton with an XK120 Special and later in the month contested Le Mans with a C2-R alongside Phil Walters. The team had been working on their cars but suffered a setback as Cadillac had suddenly withdrawn its supply of engines though a solution was found with the brand-new Chrysler Firepower engines. The first five cars were begun in order to finish the racing versions in time for shipment to France. The first two were street prototypes, designated C-1, in which various suspensions and other systems were tried while the three race cars, designated C-2R, were completed in three months by a dedicated crew of 32, working 80-hour weeks and arrived in France with a total of 20 hours’ testing between them. The 24 Hours was dominated by Jaguar’s new C-Types though the Cunningham had been showing well but two eventually retired, leaving the Fitch/Walters car to carry on alone. They ran in second place for some time but at midday on Sunday they had to pit with engine problems. The crew made repairs and it crawled around doing occasional slow laps, waiting for the race end, but they were not classified as they could not get their final laps done in the minimum time. However, the car had held second for six hours, run the fastest on the Mulsanne Straight at 152mph, and had run a lap at almost 99mph and the effort was deemed a success. The team later scored victories at Watkins Glen and Elkhart Lake plus began work on the next series of cars, the road-going C-3 and racing C-4R. Away from the Cunningham drives he was fifth in a Effyh 500 at a Giants Despair hillclimb plus took victory with a Ferrari 195S at Allentown in October. November saw him contest the Carrerera Panamericana with a Chrysler Saratoga Carrera though he did not finish. In two races at Palm Beach in early December he had victories with a Ferrari 340 America and an KK120. 1951 had been the first year of the SCCA’s National Sports Car Championship, an eight race series which began in May and ended in December, and John was the season’s champion.
In 1952 he was twenty first in March with a Jaguar Special at the 12 Hour Vero Beach alongside John Whitmore and third in May at Bridgehampton with a Jaguar XK120. At Le Mans, the Cunningham roadster-bodied C-4R and C-4RK coupe were smaller and lighter than the earlier cars and were now putting out 325 horsepower. A three-car team took up the challenge, two C-4R roadsters and one with a closed coupé body (C-4RK), with John teamed alongside George Rice in one of the roadsters. Walters took the lead on the first lap in his Cunningham, though was running third after forty laps, before handing over to Carter, who crashed into the sandbank at Mulsanne. He finally extricated the car after almost two hours of digging, but just before midnight, the coupe joined the Fitch/Rice roadster in retirement, caused in both instances by valve trouble. Further C-4R drives brought second at Thompson and victories at Watkins Glen and a 4 Hour race at Turner air base. He continued to race his Fitch-Whitmore as well as a works Sunbeam-Talbot at the Alpine Rally plus took victory with a C-Type Jaguar at Watkins Glen and fourth at Nurburgring with a Porsche 356. Mercedes’ chief engineer, Rudolf Uhlenhaut, had been impressed by his performance at Le Mans and offered the opportunity to test the car at Nurburgring. Advised by team manager Alfred Neubauer to take it easy, he saw this as an opportunity to join the team so drove his allotted two laps as if his career depended on it. Neubauer’s response was to have him do an extra lap to prove the times weren’t just down to luck and he took a few seconds off his previous lap. After convincing Mercedes to compete in the Carrera Panamericana he was invited to pilot one of the team’s cars and was paired with Eugen Geiger in a 300SL Spyder. The car kept throwing the treads off its tyres and he also suffered a high-speed blowout that took out one of the shock absorber mounts, which affected the front suspension. But the repairs to the car were deemed illegal (returning to the garage after the start of the penultimate stage to adjust the wheel alignment)and they were disqualified. Moss later told him “You did a bloody good job. You were bloody fast.”
The following year would be notable and it started with victory in February in a C-4R at the National Sports Car Championship’s opening round, a 6 Hour event at MacDill Air Force base. In the following month he and Phil Walters beat the Aston Martin team at the Sebring 12 Hours (from pole plus recorded the fastest lap) in a C-4. Aston’s team manager John Wyer thought he had the race won, stating “I never imagined anyone would beat us. Especially not Americans” and it was the first Sebring victory for American drivers in an American car. He again competed in European rallies in a works Sunbeam-Talbot plus was third in a Porsche 356 at Nurburgring and took his rookie test for the Indy 500 in a Kurtis-Kraft-Offy but did not qualify. In Nash Healey drives he competed in the Mille Miglia with Raymond Willday and the Tourist Trophy at Dundrod with Peter Wilson and was fourth at Aix-les-Bains in a Cooper Monaco. September saw his GP debut at Monza for the HWM team though engine problems after fourteen laps ended his race and though he and Bud Boile came home sixteenth in the Carrera Panamericana at end of November in a Chrysler New Yorker they were disqualified for being over the time limit. He was back at Le Mans in June, where Briggs Cunningham brought three cars, with John and Phil Walters in a C-5R, nicknamed ‘Shark’ because of its jaw-like grille. The team had projected the average speed required to win but had not allowed for Jaguar’s use of the innovative new Dunlop disc brakes. The C-5R’s top speed was higher than the Jaguars but they were able to maintain their velocity much deeper into the corners due to their brakes, with Walters recalling how “long after we started braking the Jags were still going flat out.” At 4pm the flag fell and at the end of the first hour Moss was leading followed by Villoresi, Rolt, Cole, Kling, Fangio, Sanesi and John. By 9pm the Cunningham was in fifth place though in the early hours of the morning they were fourth. As the dawn approached a damp mist hung about, making conditions very tiring for the drivers and when they had cleared the Jaguar was still leading with the Cunningham in third place, a lap ahead of the Moss/Walker and Whitehead/Stewart Jaguars. On the Sunday morning, Walters had a big moment when his Cunningham blew a tyre at high speed, though he was able to catch it, but with the subsequent pitstop to fix the damage, Moss was able to move up to third. By mid-morning the leading Jaguar was way out in front but they could not ease up as the Cunningham was charging and challenging the Moss/Walker Jaguar for second place. In the closing stages, as Hamilton took over to complete the last stage of the race he was followed by Moss and John but, as they started the last hour, both Jaguars and Cunningham began to have their bonnets split, due to fastening catches breaking and both stopped to tear a piece off. The Jaguars were first and second and the podium was completed by John and Walters and it was an effort of remarkable reliability that all cars of the Jaguar, Cunningham and Panhard works teams finished. Shortly after this the team travelled to Reims for a 12 Hour race but John was lucky to survive a 140 mph end-over-end crash. The car was returned to America and rebuilt though it was said the accident had the team baffled for many years before they realised that the car’s body shape was an excellent wing, which caused the car to lift. C-4R drives saw second place at Turner Air Force base in October and in following month he won at March Air Force base.
An early race in January the following year saw third in a 200 Mile event at MacDill with a Ferrari 250M and a victory in October with the C-4R at Turner Air Force base. In shared Ferrari drives with Walters they retired at Sebring and Le Mans and were sixth in the Reims 12 Hours with a C-R4.
In the Mille Miglia in April 1955 he and Kurt Gesell raced a stock 300 SL whose suspension was so bad, “we had to stop and tie down the axle with our belts.” However, they finished fifth (and class winners) behind Moss and Fangio’s 300 SLRs, a Ferrari and a Maserati. Now part of the Mercedes team (he was also reserve driver for at a couple of Grands Prix) sadly at Le Mans, his co-driver Pierre Levegh was involved in the worst accident in motor racing, with the tragedy leading him to develop energy-absorbing safety barriers. September saw his second World Championship drive and he was ninth with the Stirling Moss Auto Racing Maserati 250F. Although Mercedes would eventually abandon circuit racing he shared the winning 300SL with Moss in the Tourist Trophy at Dundrod and was fourth in the following month’s Targa Florio in a 300SLR with Desmond Titterington. When he returned to America at the end of that year, Ed Cole, then Chief Engineer at Chevrolet, asked him to help make Corvette a world class racing marque. Under his management, 1956 began with a class land speed record for production cars at Daytona Beach of 145.543 mph. Then came Sebring, where four cars were entered, but different engines put them in different classes, B and C Production. The team won both classes, taking the team prize as well (with him and Walt Hansgen finishing ninth) and he concluded “It was less than we had hoped for but probably more than we deserved.” Racing Briggs Cunningham’s D-Type Jaguar during the year he had two second place results and two victories at Thompson and fourth at Cumberland. There was another second place in a shared drive with Cunningham in the 6 Hour Road America then in December he was at Nassau and in the four races had a victory and second place, fourth in the Governor’s Trophy and thirty eighth in the Nassau Trophy.
1957 saw a retirement at Sebring alongside Taruffi in a Corvette SS while he continued to race successfully with the Cunningham team’s D-types, taking victory at Thompson, second at Road America and two thirds at Lime Rock plus fourth at Watkins Glen. He began racing Maseratis and won the 1 hour Thompson with a 150S plus was second at Lime Rock and Montgomery with a 300S. 200S drives produced fourth and fifth at Watkins Glen and Bridgehampton while at Nassau in December he was twenty ninth in the Nassau TT, thirty eighth in the Governor’s Trophy and second and third in the Preliminary Governor’s Trophy and Nassau Memorial Trophy but did not start in the Nassau Trophy. During this time he also became hands on in the development and management (becoming the circuit director) of the Lime Rock circuit, which was always in demand for road and race car testing purposes. Continuing racing the Maserati 200S in 1958, he was second, third and fourth at races at Lime Rock though retired in a shared Ferrari 250TR drive with Ed Hugus at Sebring.
In 1959 he drove a Porsche Spyder with Edgar Barth to fifth (and second in class) at Sebring and was fourth and fifth at Road America and Bridgehampton with a Lister. Cooper Monaco drives saw victory and fourth at Lime Rock plus fourth at Meadowvale but he had retirements in Lotus 15 and Corvette drives at Lime Rock and Road America. In July he entered a Formula Libre race at Lime Rock Park which offered a sizeable cash purse in hopes of attracting name drivers and the grid would field Aston Martins, Ferraris and Maseratis plus drivers including Pedro and Ricardo Rodriguez. However, Rodger Ward took a shock victory in his Kurtis Kraft Midget, ahead of Maseratis driven by Chuck Daigh and Pedro Rodriguez and John was fourth in a Cooper Monaco T49. He eventually helped develop the Corvette into a racing contender and in 1960, although he and Cunningham retired at Sebring, there was a GT-class win and eight overall alongside Bob Grossman at Le Mans, the first for an American car. After that he raced a Maserati Tipo 60 alongside William Kimberley at the 500 Mile Road America and, continuing with it the following year, had a third place finish at Road America with Cunningham and Dick Thompson.
There was only a fourteenth place finish at Sebring in 1962 alongside Cunningham in their E-Type Jaguar though they retired the E-Type at Sebring the next year. In other drives during 1963 he was thirteenth in a BMC at Marlboro while drives in a Genie brought fifth at Lime Rock and Virgina and eighth at Bridgehampton and in two Genie drives in 1964 he was fourth and sixth at Lime Rock. Returning to Sebring in the following two seasons to drive a Porsche 904 GTS with Briggs Cunningham’s team, he was twentieth in 1965 alongside Cunningham and Bill Bencker though retired in 1966 with Briggs and Dave Jordan when, well into the race, a valve broke. This would be his and Brigg’s final race, with John declaring “The thought that this would be our last race never occurred to us. There was a feeling, though, that we weren’t really planning to win. In the past, we usually tried to work out a strategy to win but not this time. I think we were there because we just liked to drive. And at Sebring we could, for 12 hours! Besides, it was the best place to watch the race.”
He would continue to drive in vintage racing events, particularly at Lime Rock Park, as well as at Goodwood’s Festival of Speed and the Monterey Historic Automobile Races. In 2010 at Le Mans, at 92 years of age, he drove the restored Briggs Cunningham Corvette, which he had co-driven with Bob Grossman to a GT class win in 1960, in a ceremonial lap around the track. However, he did return to automotive competition at 87 years of age in 2003 and again in 2005, with a 50 year old 300 SLR at Bonneville in an attempt to break the land speed record for the class. Unfortunately the attempts failed due to the fuel injection pump, which limited the top speed to only 150 mph (and short of the 170mph goal). A few years before this he set a speed record–for driving backwards, reaching 60 mph at Lime Rock and the Bonneville attempt event was shown in a film by Chris Szwedo entitled ‘A Gullwing at Twilight: The Bonneville Ride of John Fitch’ and broadcast on the American PBS channel in 2006.
Although his safety efforts began in earnest after the Le Mans disaster he himself saw his safety advocacy as rooted in his wartime experience. He was motivated by dedicating his life to safety in response to the agony of war, stating “I was a wartime bomber pilot and a fighter pilot and I was involved in some fatal events..this is a payback in a way.” He held a couple of patents on vehicle suspension systems, plus one on a stowable luggage rack and even one on a wood-burning stove, but the majority were related to both on-track and on-highway crash safety. His Fitch Inertial Barrier, small plastic barrels filled with varying amounts of sand that progressively slow and cushion a car in a crash, were inspired by the anti-strafe barrels he used to protect his tent from aerial fire during the war. He began by filling old liquor crates with various amounts of sand and crash-tested his invention himself, driving into them at 70mph and taking the risk for any design flaws upon his own shoulders. They would eventually be introduced onto American roads and used in every state. His patent for it is one of 15 he owned, most of them for motor racing and driving on highways but a notable exception was one for a system for steering hot-air balloons. Other impact absorbing systems he devised included the Fitch Compression Barrier, which was suited for oval tracks and other such high speed situations with little runoff area. It comprised a set of strong, thick-walled resilient elastomer cylinders about a yard in diameter placed between the guardrail and the wall, gently absorbing the vehicle’s energy without bouncing it back onto the track. In the 1990s he designed and patented the Fitch Displaceable Guardrail, designed to capture and cushion a car on impact and absorb the energy of the collision, which would ensure a more controlled deceleration and avoid the car bouncing back across the circuit. He also engineered the Fitch Driver Capsule, a seat incorporating a seatback which pivots integral with the seatbelt in order to reduce the inertial force experienced by the driver. He later extended the principle with the Fitch Full Driver Capsule, by anchoring the helmet to the seatback to prevent basilar skull fracture and hyperextension of the neck, in a manner similar to that of the HANS device. Other innovations included the Evans Waterless Engine Cooling System, a propylene glycol based cooling system which does not require pressurisation and the DeConti Brake, a liquid-cooled secondary braking system for light trucks, buses and similar vehicles. His Fitch Fuel Catalyst reduced the proportion of light chain molecules in gasoline, and inhibited oxidation and micro-organism growth in both gasoline and diesel fuel. His Salisbury Thermo-Syphon Fireplace used waste heat to provide convective heating and the Fitch Cervical Spine Traction Therapy allowed freedom of movement in bed while continuing to provide tension that relieves disk pressure.
In addition to receiving a Presidential Citation, theatre awards, Air medals, a Purple Heart and a POW Medal for his wartime service, he received the Kenneth Stonex Award in 1998. This latter award was from the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences for his lifelong contributions to road-traffic safety. In presenting the award, committee chairman John F. Carney III stated “In all, John Fitch’s achievements in road safety throughout the world have spanned four and one-half decades. His lifetime contributions covered the full spectrum of highway safety-the roadside, the vehicle and the driver. All have resulted in significant reductions in injuries and fatalities on the motorways of the world.”
Besides his Fitch Model B and Fitch-Whitmore cars, in the early and mid 1960s he created two versions of the Chevrolet Corvair, one being the Fitch Sprint, which only had minor modifications to the engine but upgrades to the shock absorbers and springs, adjustments to the wheel alignment, quicker steering ratio, alloy wheels and metallic brake linings plus body options such as spoilers were available. The Fitch Phoenix was commissioned in 1966, when he collaborated with his friend Coby Whitmore (a successful magazine illustrator and commercial artist) and they worked together for three years to come up with a design. It was originally intended to have glass fibre bodywork to cut weight but after being impressed by the high quality construction on an Intermeccanica Italia, he commissioned Frank Reisner’s Intermechanicca Group in Turin, Italy to construct the first Phoenix prototype using steel panelling. Wedded to a highly modified Corvair drive train and running gear, using a base of readily available mechanical parts was essential to ensure that spares would be available and to simplify servicing. Priced at $8,760, it made its debut at the New York Auto Show in July 1966 and caused a sensation, with around 100 people putting down deposits to buy one. Unfortunately Congress passed the Highway Safety Act that year, legislating the establishment of a Highway Safety Bureau to set safety standards for cars and as nobody knew what effect the forthcoming legislation would affect the design and construction of cars, he had to delay his project until more was known. At the start of 1968 he had a better idea of what was needed to comply with the new legislation, but by this time a road safety crusade had targeted the Corvair. This campaign resulted in Chevrolet terminating production of the car and with it no longer available, John didn’t have the engines and chassis he needed to put his Phoenix into production. His original plan had been to build 500 Phoenixes but only the one prototype was made and it remained in his possession until he passed away. It was occasionally exhibited at car shows, including the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance and also featured in a 2014 episode of the Discovery Channel series ‘Chasing Classic Cars’, where it was given a minor restoration by Wayne Carini before being sold by Bonhams that year for $253,000. His company, John Fitch & Co., Inc., went on to manufacture and market the Fitch Firebird and Toronado Phantom, but they received less attention than the Fitch Sprint.
He was presented with the Simeone Museum’s Spirit of Competition award plus was inducted into the Corvette Hall of Fame (2000) for his contributions to the early Corvette racing team plus into the Sebring Hall of Fame (2002), the Sports Car Club of America Hall of Fame (2005), the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (2007) and in 2009 into the New England Auto Racers Hall of Fame. He wrote his autobiography in 1960, ‘Adventure on Wheels’ and in 1993 an authorised biography was published, ‘John Fitch: Racing Through Life’ plus the 2005 book ‘Racing with Mercedes’ tells of his time with the Mercedes-Benz team. Don Klein, was Editor-in-Chief of Mercedes Momentum (MB USA’s customer magazine) and during this time met John. They collaborated to write the ‘Racing With Mercedes’ book which led to a friendship which included travelling around the world together for John’s many speaking engagements.
In 2007, long time friend Art Evans hosted a 90th birthday party for John at his home in California and amongst the many guests who attended were Phil Hill and Carroll Shelby and Bob Bondurant flew over from Phoenix. On the following day in Los Angeles he presented a paper to a Society of Automotive Engineers conference entitled, “Are We Flat-Out for Survivable Deceleration? The 1955 Crash at Le Mans—Its Impact on Racing.”
John passed away on Wednesday October 31st, 2012 at home in Lakeville, having been treated for Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare skin cancer, and respiratory ailments. His wife Elizabeth had died in 2009 and he was survived by sons Stephen, John and Christopher and six grandchildren. A memorial service was held on the 1st December where speeches were made by one of his sons, John H. Fitch, followed by actor Edward Herrmann, long-time friend and writer Don Klein and fellow racer Sam Posey. In July 2018, the final resting places of John and Elizabeth were formally dedicated during a ceremony where more than 70 family members, racers and friends gathered to witness a graveside blessing. A three-man military colour guard bugled ‘Taps’ and presented a folded Stars and Stripes flag to his family in recognition of his World War II service. A permanent cemetery monument honouring John and his wife was one part of intensive fundraising efforts by Vintage Sports Car Club of America members and various other admirers. His headstone features crossed checkered flags and the inscription “He made driving and racing safer for all of Us.”
A blue-water sailor, a fighter pilot, a test pilot, a professional racing driver, a team manager, race course director, prolific inventor, highway safety expert, automaker, entrepreneur and dreamer.
With just two Grand Prix races recorded against his name, the uninitiated may be given the false impression that John Fitch was just another insignificant run-of-the-mill driver – far from it.
An ocean racer, a fighter pilot, a test pilot, a professional racing driver, a team manager, race course director, prolific inventor, highway safety expert, automaker, and entrepreneur., he was born John Cooper Fitch in Indianapolis, Indiana, August 4, 1917. He is a descendent of the inventor of the steamboat. His step-father was an executive with the old Stutz car company so Fitch witnessed auto racing at an early age, attending the Indianapolis 500 race in the passenger seat of a Stutz Bearcat at the Brickyard.
In the late thirties, Fitch went from Kentucky Military Institute to Lehigh University to study civil engineering. In 1939 he traveled to Europe and saw the last race at Brooklands just days before Chamberlain’s declaration of World War II. Returning to the ‘States, he sailed around the Gulf of Mexico in a 32-foot schooner from Sarasota to New Orleans.
In the spring of 1941 he volunteered in the Army Air Corps. In 1944, as a P-51 pilot in the Fourth Fighter Group on bomber escort missions near the end of World War II, he became one of the first Americans to shoot down a German ME 262 jet fighter. After 4 years of combat duty and just 2 months before the end of the war, he was himself shot down and became a POW.
Then seven years after shooting at the Germans, he was driving their racing cars – in the cockpit of a Mercedes-Benz 300SL prototype at the 1952 Pan American Road Race. The previous year he had been the first Sports Car Club of America National Champion.
For 18 years during the 50s and 60s, Fitch had a racing career that included driving for Mercedes-Benz and the Briggs Cunningham team, with major wins in the Grand Prix of Argentina, the Mille Miglia, Tourist Trophy and Sebring. Fitch also drove six times in the Le Mans 24-hour race, finishing as high as 3rd.
He was the first racing team manager for Corvette (in 1956 and 1957) and he was the first general manager of the Lime Rock race course.
He started in racing, as many of his era did, in an MG-TC, at Bridgehampton. The first two of five Fitch-designed cars were built in the early fifties: the Fitch Model B and the Fitch-Whitmore Jaguar. The “B” was a Fiat 1100 chassis with the small Ford 60 V8 tuned for midget racing and a modified Crosley body. The Jag special was an XK-120 with 800 pounds of bodywork replaced with lightweight aluminum. Both were successful racing cars.
In March 1951, on his first racing trip overseas, he won the Peron Grand Prix, a sports car race in Buenos Aires, driving an Allard-Cadillac that had been rebuilt from a wreck. This victory brought him to the attention of millionaire racer and entrant Briggs Cunningham, who took him into his sports car team, which was attempting to win Le Mans and other long-distance events. General Juan Peron generously awarded him membership in the Peronista Party. Evita gave him a trophy and a kiss (he admits that she died soon afterward).
In 1953, Fitch and co-driver Phil Walters beat the Aston Martin team at Sebring in a Chrysler-powered Cunningham C-4, much to their surprise. The British team manager thought he had the race won. “I never imagined anyone would beat us,” John Wyer said. “Especially not Americans.” It was the first Sebring victory for American drivers in an American car.
His escapades in racing included a 140 mph end-over-end crash at the wheel of a Cunningham C-5 at Rheims. That had the team baffled for nearly forty years before they realized that the body shape was an excellent wing, which caused the car to lift.
Having impressed Neubauer during a test in a 300SL Mercedes in 1952, Fitch finally got the call from the great man and found himself in the factory sports car team for 1955, and reserve driver at a couple of Grands Prix. He was in good company on the Mercedes team with Juan Manuel Fangio, Stirling Moss and Karl Kling. It was the most formidable racing team of all time, winning Formula One, Sports Racing, production GT sports cars and all classes including even Diesel passenger cars, all in a single year. A class win in the Mille Miglia was the high point of Fitch’s driving career – fifth overall in a production 300SL behind 4 sports racing cars – the two Mercedes 300 SLRs of Moss and Fangio, Maglioli’s Ferrari and Guiardini’s Maserati. However, at Le Mans that year, Fitch’s co-driver, Pierre Levegh, was involved in the worst accident in racing, killing 85 spectators.
It directed his life into energy-absorbing safety barriers, and the installation of racing barriers at Lime Rock and Watkins Glen as early as 1968. When he returned from three years of racing in Europe at the end of the ’55 season, Ed Cole, then Chief Engineer at Chevrolet, asked him to help realize his dream of making Corvette a world class racing marque. The first rung on that high ladder was in setting a production sports car record of 145 mph on the sand beach at Daytona.
As the Corvette team captain at Sebring in ’56 and ’57, Fitch struggled to make the early Corvettes capable of a respectable performance. The importance of Fitch’s contribution has never been fully recognized. Just two months before the 12-hour race, he started with a nice boulevard sports car that could not complete a single lap without breaking. When the event commenced, it began with a team of Fitch prepared sports cars ready to race. With two class wins and the team prize, he concluded “It was less than we had hoped for, but probably more than we deserved.” None other than Dick Thompson was one of the eight drivers that made it possible.
In 1959 he drove a factory Porsche Spyder with Edgar Barth to a second in class and fifth overall in the Sebring 12-hour race. Racing with his friend and patron Briggs Cunningham, he ran D-Type and Lister Jaguars at Lime Rock, Road America and Thompson CT. As Lime Rock circuit director, he organized and drove in the famous Formula Libre race. He took a fourth place to winner Roger Ward in an Offy midget (that shocked the sports car troops!).
In 1960, he went back to Le Mans with the Cunningham Team and more American cars: Corvettes, three of them. The Corvettes had been tested and refined at Bridgehampton and later in the Sebring race. With Ferrari pilot Bob Grossman as co-driver, they finished 8th overall, equal to the Corvette finish at Le Mans in 2001, 41 years later. In both cases, a production sports car finished ahead of dozens of all-out sports racing machines.
In the early and mid 60s, with introduction of the Chevrolet Corvair, Fitch created two versions for the car enthusiast. One was the Fitch Sprint based on the production Corvair, the other the Fitch Phoenix. The former had four carburetors, an extensively revised rear suspension, faster steering, better brakes and many other refinements. The latter is conceded to be a timeless classic, as well as a performer at only 2150 lbs.
East Coast racing in a two-liter Maserati and a Cooper Monaco rounded out the final years of his career. The poignant tale of his last race begins at the 1966 Sebring event. Fitch and Cunningham were driving a Porsche 904. Well into the race, a valve broke and the car was out of contention.
They both officially retired from serious racing on the spot.
