It lives! The wacky Weitz X600 survives

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Years ago we wondered wether the Weitz X600 - a sinister looking coachbuilt Camaro commissioned by one of the great men in fashion design in 1979 - could survive. It simply seemed to have disappeared from the world. It now turns out that the car was in a private collection all the time.

Fashion designers obviously like cars. Karl Lagerfeld once had his own BMW 750 made; André Courrèges did a cool Matra Bagheera; Paul Smith a stripy Mini while Ralph Lauren regularly exhibits his super shiny toys at concourses and museums.

But other then designing shirts or socks they never styled a car of themselves, it seems. The great exception to the rule is the late John Weitz. Weitz made fame with menswear in the sixties and seventies and always liked cars. In 1959 he even combined his love for the automobile with his job, writing ‘Sports clothes for your sports car’: a 120-page chronicle on what to wear while driving. He was a regular competitor in the VSCC and owned plenty of nice sports cars. From Allard to Ferrari; from Healey to Corvette.

The only thing he didn’t have was a unique piece: a car no one else had. And so he set himself to the task of creating one. By now it was the late seventies. Weitz asked John DeLorean for advice on a sports car design, but DeLorean had other ideas and reputedly answered: “I don’t design pants, you don’t design cars” and walked away. Weitz didn’t care. He ended up with Albrecht Goertz, but the design for a two-seat sports car he eventually came up with was largely penned by himself.

The car was based on the chassis of a brand new (1979) Camaro Z-28 and used about all of its engineering. But it was clothed in a dramatic new aluminium suit made by Mallalieu Cars in rural Northamptonshire, UK. When finished in December 1979 the Chevrolet-based sports car was air freighted to Kennedy International Airport where Weitz picked it up. By this time the car was christened ‘Weitz X600’. With ‘X’ for experimental and ‘600’ for the address number in New York of Weitz’ Madison Avenue offices. Apparently Weitz had plans for a limited series at around 60.000 dollars each. It never was to be so. The X600 remained a one-off and when its creator passed away in 2002, every trace of the car had been gone.

Until recently, that is. The Weitz X600 turned up in a sale last year, when the 'Don Smith Collection of Automobiles and Race Cars' was sold in Illinois. See here for more details. We are really pleased to read that the wacky Weitz is still among us, but now wonder once again: where did it go..?

(Words Jeroen Booij, pictures Galivan auctioneers)

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