Nice work, John: ’64 Corvair Monza Sprint
If you want to know everything about John Fitch, you need to go the Wikipedia page to see just a glimpse of what this man accomplished in his life. We know him best as an A-list racing driver who raced for Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, Cunnigham and Chevrolet. But that is not all. He was a champion of auto racing safety and invented the Fitch barrier that we see on American highways across this country. He had an uncanny ability to evaluate a car’s performance and instinctively knew how to make it better. He drove the the 300SL prototype for Mercedes Benz, the first American racer to join the team we believe, and helped make that car the icon it is today. So it isn’t surprising for him to take a shot at upgrading production cars that he felt needed his touch. 
He tackled the Oldsmobile Toronado and the Chevrolet Corvair. Sprints received modifications to the engine, bringing it to 155 hp, and better shock absorbers, springs, tweaks to the wheel alignment, faster steering, alloy wheels, metallic brake linings, a wood-rimmed steering wheel made it competitive with sports cars costing much more. Today’s featured listing is an early Fitch Sprint and it is a beautiful example. It looks very complete with all of the Fitch add-ons intact and in working order. We love the full-width stone guard! The convertible top is powered and works well. This is a pretty rare car and we do not know how many survived. In fact even John Fitch didn’t know how many he built or how many kits were sold. There are no serial numbers specific to the Sprint or any positive way of identifying one. If you have a receipt from John Fitch & Co with the VIN # is about the only way to do it. What are they worth? A totally verified one as we described could be worth more than double what a standard Monza is worth. It will be interesting to see what this one does. See it here on eBay by clicking here.
My first car was a 64 corvair, black with white top and red interior. I would love to drive one of these as the car had gotten a totally undeserved bad rap which only served to catapult that nut ralph nader into stardom. And I tried to turn left and then right quickly to turn the car over many times and it wouldn’t work. Such nonsense. My only problem was that the o-rings on little tubes which contained the push rods would leak oil into the enclosure that was used to capture warm air and it brought toxic fumes into the passenger compartment and black film onto the windshield. Ralph didn’t identify that problem.