Cheetah

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He knew exactly what he was doing, William ‘Bill’ P. Thomas. He wasn’t a trained engineer, but he started making Chevrolet faster in the 1950s. At that time, it wasn’t called tuning yet; it was still honest, clean work, and Thomas soon became one of the best, earning the nickname ‘Mr. Corvette’. He was so good that General Motors commissioned him to make the Corvair faster, to equip the legendary ‘62 Bel Air and Biscayne with the 409-cubic-inch engines for the factory and to continue working on the Corvette; a Chevy prepared by Bill Thomas Race Cars won the Pikes Peak Hill Climb.

When the first Cobras from Carroll Shelby appeared on the race tracks and soon did nothing but humiliate the Corvette, Bill Thomas immediately had a plan: the car had to be smaller, lighter – and even more powerful. The result was the Cheetah, one of the most extreme vehicles of all time.

Everything was going well. Thomas received support from General Motors, the hottest 327ci racing engine (with up to 500 hp), transmissions from Muncie, the rear axle and drum brakes from the Corvette. Don Edmunds designed a chassis and mould according to Thomas’ specifications. It was actually a mid-engine car, but with the driver sitting very close behind the engine; the rear overhang of an automobile has probably never been shorter. They first worked with aluminium, then with fibreglass, but somehow luck was not on Thomas’ side: the first Cheetah crashed two days before the presentation, the second had a crash in the first round of its first race; the third Cheetah was immediately converted into a roadster by the owner and didn’t move either.

There was certainly some bad luck involved. But then disaster struck. When the temperature problems had finally been solved (they simply forgot to bleed the engine in the first few cars), and the tubular frame chassis, which was too weak at the beginning, was finally stable enough, and the driving behaviour was – finally – predictable enough to make the car, which weighs almost 800 kilograms, driveable, the FIA changed the regulations. The number of cars required for homologation was no longer 100, but 1000. And that was too much for Chevrolet, which already had enough problems of its own. Then the factory burnt down – Bill Thomas got tired of it all. But what we do know is that the Cheetahs were faster than the 427 Cobra on the quarter mile. Probably 21 of them were made, but most of them were lost on the racetrack due to cold forming. There are said to be eight originals left.