Cheetah Charges Back

October 8, 2009, Posted by Nick Hall at 5:27 pm

The sensible part of anyone’s brain says this is a bad idea, from beginning to end. But then that part of the psyche rarely gets a look-in when it comes to buying sportscars and this olde world muscle car, the Cheetah, might just work.

This is a continuation car, not a replica, which would be a big deal, except that Cheetah built just 23 cars before the factory was destroyed by a fire in 1965. Race prep expert Bill Thomas had approached GM with a concept car that could take on Ford’s GT40 and even the Ferraris of the time, but it didn’t get far.

The Cheetahs that did make it into the world gained a fearful reputation for wayward handling, too. But even in ’65 they were cranking out 215mph speeds at Daytona, and this new version is a mildly safer version of that same car.

Without the fire history could have remembered another colorful character, but the lost momentum allowed GM to focus on its Corvette racing teams and the project slipped under without a fight. And now it’s back in almost exactly the same form.

The Cheetah has a spaceframe chassis, a 350 Chevy V8 with twin four-barrel carbs and a fibreglass body built to the same specs as the original. It also comes with a signed certificate of authenticity from Bill Thomas himself.

It looks like a blown-up go kart sat on fat, high-profile tyres. It’s a cartoon of a car that is basically a housing for that huge engine, two seats and a side-exit exhaust. In short it’s a hilarious weekend car, but at more than $100,000 these won’t be cheap thrills.

Still, it’s always heart-warming to see something different out there and with the back story, this car is in with half a chance of selling more cars second time around.