Miguel Sánchez
CHEETAH PHOTOS: GUERNSEY'S AUCTIONS
Today things seem to be about animals. What runs the most? What is more dangerous? A cheetah or a cobra? The truth is that the feline -called in English cheetah- He is the champion on land, although the cobra bite ... It is so deadly that it could kill you before starting any race. Well, something similar happened in the 60s when in the American automobile industry Bill Thomas's muscular Cheetah wanted to unseat to AC Cobra by Carroll Shelby.
It was a time of extravagant dreams, where some vehicles tried to combine the lightness of small sports chassis "Made in England" with the rough power of the American V8. From there they came vehicles like the Cobra: a true devourer who some wanted to dethrone by repeating a very similar formula.
That was what the coach proposed Bill Thomas; one of those modifiers that in the middle of the last century continued to feed the legend of the races mounted on handcrafted modified street cars. Your eyes always were put in the Chevrolet, on which he began to work on many modifications until in the 60s he founded his own company specializing in customizing Corvettes.
All that caught the attention of General Motors itself, which signed Bill in order to prepare his cars for such legendary races as the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. However… The most interesting was yet to come: in 1963 Chevrolet decided to support Bill in his "Cheetah project", establishing a relationship still not very clear between both figures but that served to give birth to what, possibly, is one of the most exciting and crazy cars on the American scene.
CHEETAH: CRAFTSMANSHIP, RADICALITY AND CHALK
That GM support for the project seemed more testimonial than anything else. Why? Well, because if she had really believed in the project, the technical means that Bill Thomas would have had would, of course, have gone beyond a few pieces of wood and some chalk. Obviously there were more things in his workshop, but it is impressive to know that the prototype was made in a completely handmade way, painting with chalk outlines of the shapes on the frame through a process where there were no previous plans and in which the pieces were fitted by pure intuition.
Parts that were put together from the scrapping of several cars, joining an engine SmallBlock V8 -this family of engines was in production from 1955 to 1998- extracted from a Corvette with a multitude of exotic elements such as some brakes coming from NASCAR. Regarding the chassis, it had not a few problems of rigidity, although the chrome moly multitubular could finally withstand the onslaught of a design so short of battle that the engine is attached to the differential without the need for a common drive shaft.
Once the prototype was finished, the result was a real adrenaline pump: a small sports car with only 680 kilos where practically only the central engine with displacement increased to the 6.177 cc, where you drive almost sitting on the rear axle, with your legs stretched parallel to the engine and with your rear on some side exhaust pipes where a sound devoid of contemplations emanates. The very chariot of hell!
AMONG THE FLAMES OF HELL
And if we think of hell ... What do we have there? Exactly, a lot of fire. Just what doomed the Cheetah. The cooling problems were constant, accentuated even more in a car where the very small cabin lacked all the accessories -it doesn't even have an odometer- place the driver in the circumstances that we have mentioned before.
However… The Cheetah's projection was on the circuits, so that shouldn't be a big deal considering his typical client is someone with a taste for roasting in racing overalls.
The real problem of the Cheetah with the fire came when in 1965 the Bill Thomas factory was the subject of a fire where the -now now- blueprints, models, cars on the assembly line disappeared ... A disaster that came just at the worst moment: when the Cheetah was beginning to gain some fame on the circuits and GM could therefore have decided to give more support to a project that He needed at least 1.000 copies to homologate his cars in the most emblematic races in the USA..
Unfortunately all this remained in 11 units completed, to which we must add 8 more chassis and 22 unmounted fiberglass bodies. The one that illustrates this news is one of those few survivors, and perhaps the one that is in a more original state since it has been preserved unchanged by the son of Bill Thomas since 1965. until his recent auction in New York. There this model that tried to replicate the AC Cobra has been able to go from the U.S. dollar 750.000 -There are no confirmed public figures- but… Is there a price for Beelzebub's mount?
PD: from the looks of it, Cheetah is a sloppy name. Bill Thomas's was caught on fire, Lamborghini's - the brand's first 4 × 4 attempt - was destroyed in the tests that the American army did with him without even returning the remains to Sant'Agatta and the chimpanzees that they played Cheetah -Chita- in the Tarzan sequels ... We harbor our doubts as to whether the best place for a chimpanzee is Hollywood - in fact, in the novels of the very Martian Edgar Rice Burroughs this simian companion of Tarzan does not appear-.
