Few limited-production/kit sports racers from the Fifties-Sixties era of American road racing were as wicked looking as the Cheetah. To its detriment, it was a wicked piece to drive. The following short article sums up the Cheetah's problems, in effect answers the question of why wasn't the Cheetah a financial success . . . or "Why didn't the Cheetah Prosper?" Maybe because it was a mediocre performer on the track. Initially created to duke it out with the slippery Ford Cobras, the Cheetah unfortunately suffered from notably poor track manners. Loud, hot and squirrelly made for great automotive lore but didn't bring home the trophies. Why then was/is this car such a crowd pleaser? (and I can tell you first-hand how enjoyable it is to cheer on Mike Scott's Cheetah as it zips past the grandstand at speed.) The interest aroused by the Cheetah has more to do with its form than its function. The Cheetah is an awesome visual spectacle. It's raw, it's powerful and it's sexy-smooth body and bright red livery is stunningly beautiful. It all started when Bill Thomas and sprint car designer Don Edmunds worked together to put a fuel-injected 327 into a modified sprint car tube-frame chassis and enclose it in a stylized aluminum coupe body with a 90-inch [!] wheelbase . If all went well, a series of 100 additional fiberglass-bodied road cars were to follow, but this part of the plan was never attained. The engine was situated waaaaaay back, behind the front wheels, which put the rear of the trans within kissing distance of the differential.[and gave it a front/rear weight distribution of 48/52.] The trapezoidal openings in the hood forward of the engine, vent hot air that has passed through the horizontally mounted radiator. There was a publicity push for the Cheetah in 1964; featuring a test-drive in the prototype. Jerry Titus of Petersen Publishing's Sports Car Graphic had a turn behind the wheel. His interesting article in August of '64 tones down the excitement of driving a highly touted sportscar contender with points about the car's shortcomings. And it unfortunately had its share. Despite most journalist's wait-and-see attitude, the Cheetah just never came through. It's primary goals were unachieved and the project was shelved as a pale shadow of it's original vision. Here are some images of the Cheetah, starting with a construction shot of the original car. The others are fiberglass-bodied cars, one original and the other a replica. Finally, here's a great site where you just might be able to arrange to have one built. http://www.cheetahracecars.net/contact.htm Mike
Neat post Mike! I often thought the Cheetah was an odd combination of Cobra and Vette styling hints,and the super short rear body always stumped me.....But its history for sure!
There's a good article on Bill Thomas and the Cheetah in one of the old book like Automotive Quarterly Magazines. In the 80's a company in the midwest (Elegant or maybe Elegante was the company name) that made big swoopy powerboats, announced that they were going to build a kit car Cheetah (they were already building Cobra clones), and I thought I might like to get one, but when their sales literature finally arrived, I found that they had widened and lengthened the body so it would fit on an early to late 70s Corvette chassis. It did not interest me, and I don't know if it ever went into production. There used to be a website about old Cheetahs, and people who were building "clones" using fiberglass bodies (someone had a set of molds and would pop out a few bodies now and then). I believe Richard Carpenter (of the 70's music group The Carpenters) owned one of the first street legal Cheetahs (he is well known as a car collector). I think that the street cars may have been quasi-legal as if I remember correctly, they did not have a safety glass winshield, they had some type of lexan windshield. I remember reading that the street cars interiors got quite HOT in traffic (guess they were not really designed for daily driving). Bill Thomas was said to be the first person to unlock the horsepower secrets of the Corvette fuel injection system. I think there was at least one (maybe two) drag racing Cheetahs. The thread on Kellison got me thinking about the sports cars from this era. Right up there with the Kellison and the Cheetah was the Bocar XP5. I understand a couple still race in vintage races. All of the original ones now sell for huge money.
Don Edmunds has a website : http://www.donedmunds.com There is a little about Don's role in Bill Thomas' Cheetah and several photos. My street-legal race car is a clone of his late 60's supermodified/sprint car design.
Factory Drag Cheetah circa 1963-64: More pics and info at the Cheetahs Always Win website: http://www.cheetahcars.com/pictures.htm
Cool post Mike! I dig the Cheetahs but lean towards the Kellison. What suspension is under the Cheetahs? I havent had time to look at all the links yet.
a friend of mine has a cheetah drag car. the body is all one piece, no doors or anything and it hinges on the back and lifts up like a funny car.
BigJim394 -- Great info about the streetable Cheetahs. The hot cockpit was also a complaint about the racing versions. The design just doesn't lend itself to civilizing. An unfinished Cheetah turned up at the monthly Long Beach High Performance Swap Meet 15-16 years ago, and I had a good opportunity to inspect it up close and personal. The seller had no meaningful information about the car, but it was clear that it had just been parked inside a shop or garage following delivery, with nothing whatsoever done to it; there was no gelcoat on the fiberglass, it was wonderfully translucent in the early morning sunlight. The chassis was unprimed, much less unpainted. It had collected only a very light rust film after all those years which led me to conclude it was probably 4130. Weld quality was excellent, and brackets and small fitments all made sense -- this car had been designed and crafted by someone who knew what he was doing. In recent years I've looked back on this experience with considerable regret; the asking price for the Cheetah, rolling and steering and with a 327 core and Muncie four-speed in place, was $1500 OBO! I wasn't alone in my lack of vision that day, because when I headed for home in the early afternoon, the Cheetah was still without a suitor and could probably have gone to a new home for an OBO of about a thousand. choprods -- That Manx-cat rear seems to make little or no sense, then or now, although I must admit that it's one of my favorite visual features. I'm guessing that with the severe setback of the motor -- like an Edmunds sprintcar -- they rightfully concluded that there should be little weight aft of the rear axle. JohnnyFast -- Thanks for the Don Edmunds link. What an incredible talent he was and still is. His midgets and sprints are as exciting looking as they are competant! And his scale models are stunning! Mike
"Bill Thomas was said to be the first person to unlock the horsepower secrets of the Corvette fuel injection system. I think there was at least one (maybe two) drag racing Cheetahs" And he was quite generous with the secrets he uncovered! There were magazine articles showing his mods in detail, and you could either send him an amount of money that seemed pitiable even in 1964 ($1? $5? No more than that!) for blueprints of where to cut or just send in your whole plenum for a real Thomas slice&dice. There were two stages I believe--first was to bandsaw plenum open and remove a good bit of aluminum, shortening and opening the hidden runners to move the peak higher, the second was to cut a hole and add a second throttle body... The body was a great combination of sports car smoothness and dirt track/hot rod menace.
The one at Long Beach was live-axle front and rear, with coilovers in back and cross torsion bars up front -- dead simple and wonderful for point-and-stab driving, something that works better on dirt than pavement. I thought that the "later" iterations of the Cheetah had IFS, but the body of info about the cars is rather small, no doubt because there were so few built. The Kellison is for sure swoopier, but the old motorcycle dirt tracker in me loves the agressive sit-up/cross-it-up personality of the Cheetah -- hardley a winning form for road-racing sports cars, however.
I agree with your thoughts Mike, that drag pic makes me think the car LOOKS better in 1/4 mile trim! Sounds like a gas to drive either way?! I blame Cable TV, Ryan and Metalshapes for turning me into a vintage sportscar fan
I built Don Edmunds bodies in the late 60s when I worked at Contemporary Fiberglass in Azusa for Jim Gammage. This was after the Cheetahs. We still had the tooling and had it until sometime in the early 70s at the shop across the street from the old Fontana Drag Strip. At some point Gammages' son disappeared with the tooling for everything including the Cheetah. There were really 2 sources for the Cheetah bodies, the other being (if I recall) Fiberglass Trends. I continued doing Edmunds work off and on 'til the late 70s when I became partners with Gammage. For the record, you did not deliver junk to Edmunds. Very picky. Good for him. I hold him in high regard. Wayno
I remember a couple years back they did a feature on that car on the Speed Channel show out of Canada called Dream Car Garage. He got to rip it around the track and I think he commented on it's hot cab problems. At the end he always gives an estimated value, and I think this one was on the race circuit or something that raised it's value. Unfortunately I don't recall what he said he felt it was worth. Suffice it to say, somewhere well north of $1500
Bruce -- Do you have any links or direction back to some of Bill Thomas' how-tos? I'd love to see what he had in mind and was doing. I still think the Cheetah warranted more development rather than being dismissed, as it was, as a scary, poor-handling, ill-conceived racecar. Mike
HRM did a feature in the March '64 issue by Don Francisco. Here are some pics. The frame was 4130 - Main tubes were 1 1/4" x .063 (2 On each side), and secondary tubes were 1" x .063. Roll bar was 1 3/4 x .125. Front suspension was independent with rack and pinion steering. Rear suspension was Corvette independent. This car was the prototype that the 'glass molds were pulled from. Mutt
Did TONKA make a toy version of this? I seem to remember my cousins and myself playing with a steel TONKA sportscar like this along with our TONKA Speedbuggy! I am sure you 30 somethings remember the TONKA days?
The car had adjustable pedals and steering wheel, and the windows in the race cars were plexiglass, the street cars were safety glass. At the time of the article, the tentative prices on the ten 'glass cars he was building was $12,000 for a race car, and $7,500 for a street model. That was a lot of beans in 1964. Mutt
I had a cheetah slot car back in the early 70's, and i still love the oddity of the body the way the driver sits nearly on top of the rearend. Come to think of it i also had an HO scale of it too! Man i must of really loved that style.
The driver sitting in the extreme rear reminds me of the Gee Bee R2 1932 era Pylon Racer, with comparable stability traits I'm afraid... But it looks Bitchin!
But you'd never know its instability watching "Delmar" fly the wings off his Gee Bee Racer....!!!!!!!!!!
The Cheetah has always been one of my favorite cars. There was one found with pictures on the Cars in Barns site a while back. Several on the Big engines Little Cars site, too.
For me, it doesn't get much better than a Cheetah.( even though I haven't seen a real one in person yet...) I love the lines on it, specially when they put some fatter tires on them later on. Form follows function... And it looks agressive, you know the thing is waiting for you to make mistake in it, so it can hurt you. No false advertising there...
Alex, you know what..........it does show Dons influences. After looking at the pics again, I see a sprint car in sportscar guise. And that is a car that WAITS for you to slip up!
Whoever penned that body just absolutely nailed it. ( was that Don? ) There is a guy ( I believe in Glendale, AZ ) that is selling those bodies. I was VERY tempted, I even called him for some more info. But then I found the Special...
The front/rear distribution numbers of around 48/52 don't look like extreme rear bias, but all that very snappy 327 excitment on tap in a very short wheelbase could amplify the power hammer instantly and put matters out of controllable reach in an eye-blink. From what I've read and what I understand, it was the pronounced rear bias combined with their short wheelbase, low weight, and high horsepower that made them such scary handlers. Also made them pretty great to watch! Thanks for the kind words about the post, Ryan, but I didn't do it to out-class you. I did it to complement your Kellison post and to express my own interest and excitement in the subject of sportsracers in the '50s and beyond which it appears we share along with many others on the HAMB. Let's hope folks keep this going! Mike
In 1969 or 1970, at a local gas station/garage (where they did some foreign car repair), they had a Mercedes 300SL Gullwing coupe, minus the engine and transmission for sale for $3500.00. The owner said if it didn't sell he was going to put a small block Chevy in it. It sat there for sale for a couple of months before it sold. It was in nice shape. I was trying to build a 34 Ford Pickup with a 394 Olds at the time...wish I had sold everything I had and borrowed all I could to get that Benz....what are they worth these days? By the way, here's a pic of a sales brochure page for the 1961 BOCAR XP5. Made in Denver by Racing Cars Inc. ("Home of the fastest Sports-Racing Cars on Earth") They did not make many and it did not get much magazine coverage. I believe it had a highly tuned Corvette engine and knockoffs (on the competion model). It was said to be very light. If I remember right, one magazine tester lost a wheel on a track test when the knock off "nut" came off at speed. A few still race in vintage competition.
These cars were built in Anaheim CA. in a shop my dad owned, Bill Thomas rented it from him, Don Edmunds took his rookie test in my dad's Indy car, I was lucky enough to get to hang out in Edmunds shop when I was a kid, he will always be one of my heros. Roy Caruthers
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