Road Racer

John Cooper Fitch is a lanky, personable man whose only noticeable departure from the pattern of his age group (35) is a compulsion to go barreling down a highway faster than anyone else. Ever since he was old enough to tell a camshaft from a drive shaft, Johnny has been driving autos, preferably fast ones. Last week "Jean Feetch," as rabid French sports-car enthusiasts call him, was invited by Rootes, Ltd., makers of Britain's Sunbeam-Talbot, to drive in the Monte Carlo Rally, a 72-hour, 2,000-mile grind, as testing on men as it is on machines.

Rain, Snow, Sleet ... In the Monte Carlo Rally (TIME, Feb. 11), the race is not to the swiftest but to the surest and luckiest. The 404 entries from 20 nations took off from such widely scattered points as Stockholm, Lisbon, Glasgow and Palermo. The drivers ran into all sorts of hazards: rain, snow, sleet, fog, mechanical breakdowns, head-on crashes. In addition, eagle-eyed dockers at various points ticked off the cars as they passed, making sure that none exceeded the 65-kilometer-per-hour (40 m.p.h.) speed limit. A minute's delay here, too much speed there, and a car could be penalized right out of the running.

Driver Fitch (with Relief Drivers Peter Collins and John Cutts, both Britons) took off from Monte Carlo itself in his Sunbeam-Talbot, spun over his prescribed route through Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, and up & over the Maritime Alps of France. Crossing the finish line without a single penalty, Fitch was one of the prime favorites for the million-franc prize money and the Prince Ranier III of Monaco Cup. But in the next test--a series of starts, stops and reverses over a 250-meter course--the Sunbeam-Talbot came a cropper. "There was a small knock in the motor," said Fitch ruefully. "We lost two seconds." By that slim margin, Fitch lost his chance to become the first U.S. winner of the race. The winner: Dutch Journalist and Veteran Competitor Maurice Gatsonides, 41, driving an English Ford Zephyr. Unfazed, Fitch grinned: "I'll be back next year."

One by One. Hard-driving Johnny Fitch comes naturally by his love of sports cars. His father was a pioneer builder of horseless carriages in Indiana; his stepfather was president of the Stutz Co., builders of the famed Bearcat. After wartime service as a fighter pilot (a career cut short by an emergency bail-out into Nazi hands), Johnny took up high-speed road racing in earnest.

Johnny was soon racing all over the U.S. (he won the Elkhart Lake, Wis. race twice), Europe and South America, where he won the "Eva Peron Stakes," the National Argentine Sports Car Race, in 1951. He often drives for famed U.S. Sports-Car builder Briggs Cunningham,* and in last November's Pan-American race he became the first U.S. driver since the days of Barney Oldfield to drive a car (Mercedes) sponsored by Daimler-Benz AG.

Fitch's non-racing moments are spent in & around Stamford, Conn., with his wife (who insists she never worries when Johnny races), 18-month-old son, and Fitch Enterprises, which turns out hand-tooled sports-car bodies, "one by one, like the Italians." Gaining skill with experience in every race, Fitch is full of plans for the future: a race in Florida this month, two more in France this summer. A contemporary who classes Fitch as "one of the best in the U.S., and potentially up with the top Europeans," figures that throttle-happy Johnny has a great future in the sport "if he lives that long."

*For other news of U.S. sports cars, see BUSINESS.

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