1963 Cheetah is an Insanely Cool Corvette-Based Race Car
 

1963 Cheetah is an Insanely Cool Corvette-Based Race Car
By Robert Bacon

This could be a once in a lifetime opportunity to own a Cheetah.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.cor...15150a1cf6.png

As a kid I had a Matchbox car that was called a Cheetah, I wonder if it was modeled after this?

Supposedly, the demise of the Cheetah was due to a fire, at the Bill Thomas Race Cars shop. The tooling for the car was supposedly destroyed. What I don't understand is, wasn't the shop insured? Would it have been THAT big of an undertaking, to repair/rebuild the shop? With a car as basic as the Cheetah, how complex could the tooling have been? After all, along with Dick Guldstrand, Bill Thomas was like Chevrolet's west coast "racing coordinator", and you would think that getting the shop back up and running would have been a priority....

Cheetah Evolution makes a "car in white" psuedo kit that I plan to buy and complete very soon.

There's even an LS-based V-12 powered Cheetah that was built for SEMA

My current plans are to start with the body in white and then install an LS7...Their shop is just a few miles from my inlaws, so next trip up I'm gonna check-out the shop.

Really cool cars.... loved how there is no driveshaft; the output shaft drives the rear differential directly through a single universal joint. :cool: