[Cal Metal]

We should defer to Cheetah Neal and Cheetah Bruce on this one, as they are the feline afficionados on the forum.

The quick history......The Cheetah, more formally known as the Bill Thomas Cheetah, was a Chevrolet skunkworks project developed under the Thomas name in 1963. Thomas, a highly successful west coast racer/GM dealer, primarily in USAC, was used as a front for the building of the cars, as GM divisions were forbidden, under the 1957 AMA racing ban pronouncement, in participating, on a direct level, in any such activities.

Roughly, 26 cars were built, depending on who you talk to. I talked with Thomas a number of years ago and that was the number he gave me. There were two alloy bodied cars--one belonged to Sonny and Cher, and the remaining were fiberglass bodied. The car weighed in at 1,510 pounds (Hot Rod Magazine 1963), was powered by a standard 375 h,p, fuel injected Corvette engine and used the Chevrolet trans (Muncie) and '63 rearend/suspension Corvette components.

Jerry Titus was one of the more well known drivers who raced the car. Unfortunately, the Cheetah was developed in the twilight of their era--much like the 427 Cobra--where the front engined high performance cars were giving way to mid engine race cars like the GT-40 and the Ferrari 250 LM. You might say they it was the "last gasp" of that kind of car.

That is a thumb nail sketch. If I have left anything out of real importance, I will let Cheetah Neal and Mr. Bruce take it from here.
Oh....and they were very fast but not great handling. I investigated buying two of them on separate occasions back in the early 80s. One of the owners said it would "eat Cobras for lunch". I guess with a weight of 1,500 pounds, that would be an advantage. Four pounds per horsepower in stock form is pretty impressive. They didn't stock very long, either, furthering their advantage in a straight line.