Nothing, not even a Ferrari or Lamborghini, turns heads or rubber into smoke faster than a Cheetah. It’s the ultimate long-hood, short-deck missile!
Long before he unleashed the Cheetah, Bill Thomas gained fame as a tuner for making Rochester fuel-injected Corvettes and modified Corvairs unbeatable on the track or in traffic. His modified dual air meter FI units and serious tuned exhaust systems for Corvettes put his Anaheim, CA shop on the map. Between 1963 and 1965, Chevrolet’s answer to Carroll Shelby, developed a sports car to compete with the Snakemaster’s Cobra. Enter the Cheetah.
Thomas was well connected at Chevrolet (performance head Vince Piggins was one of his pals) and also worked on Chevy II drag racing cars. When the Camaro was introduced he partnered with Chicago’s Nickey Chevrolet to build 1968 427-inch Nickey Camaros for West Coast deliveries. The Cheetah, unlike a Nickey Camaro, was a ground up racecar built to raise hell on sports car tracks.
Thomas and talented fabricator, Don Edmunds who was primarily responsible for turning a concept into reality, designed the Cheetah prototype. Powertrain components were sourced from friends at Chevrolet and capital came from some investors and John Grow, a Rialto, CA Chevrolet dealer. The first car was actually built for Grow.
Considering that the Cheetah was an all-new, very short wheelbase unproven racecar powered by a potent Corvette small-block, it was quite successful. With the talented Jerry Titus behind the wheel, the Cheetah won a number of races in 1964. Ralph Saylor owned and drove the successful Cro-Sal Special, a topless version (to solve cockpit heat problems) he campaigned with mechanic Gene Crowe.
Even with its scary handling tendencies on road courses, few cars could catch the Cheetah on the straights (and drag strips) thanks to its Thomas-built bored & stroked 377 cubic inch (327) small-block fitted with dual air-meter Rochester injection and tuned headers. And, that includes big-block Cobras!
Between a fire at Thomas’ facility and GM padlocking its “backdoor,” the Cheetah all but disappeared. There was little chance that Thomas could ever homologate it for serious road racing and the writing was on the wall. Official records are gone, Bill Thomas passed away in 2009 and best estimates are that fewer than 30 cars were ever built. And very few were complete cars. Original Cheetahs are very expensive collectible racecars and, like Shelby’s Cobra, there is a “Continuation Cheetah” program.
The street-driven red Cheetah powered by a MOTION small-block featured here is a Continuation car built by Sarasota Café Racer Wayne Pontes at Tangible Toys and is now in Germany.
Our friend Mike Gulett blogs about the Cheetah on My Car Quest, http://mycarquest.blogspot.com/2011/04/cheetah-unrealized-potential.html
Information on Continuation Cheetahs can be found at, http://www.65cheetahccc.com/home.html
To visit Tangible Toys, check, http://www.TangibleToys.com