Cheetah Cobra Killer
by Walter Herrit
Title
Cheetah Cobra Killer
Artist
Walter Herrit
Medium
Digital Art - Digital Art
Description
Cheetah was the brainchild of self-taught engineer Bill Thomas. Nicknamed Mr. Corvette for a string of nearly 100 victories racked up in Corvettes of his creation, Thomas parlayed his success into a contract with General Motors as a performance guru of sorts. After successfully prepping GM products for road circuits, drag racing, and even NASCAR, Thomas in 1962 went about the business of preparing a Corvette Sting Ray for what should have been another dominating season. His plans were foiled, however, when Carroll Shelby appeared and began stealing SCCA podiums and headlines with his Ford-powered Cobra. The following year, GM issued its notorious ban on corporate racing, and the Vette program went dark, although back-room dealings kept some GM product on the track unofficially. Thomas later contacted Ed Cole at Chevrolet and pitched the idea of going after the Cobra with a new Chevrolet-powered vehicle, one that would be produced in small enough numbers that it would be viewed as a rogue project that could fly under the radar of Chevrolet administrators.
Once given the nod, Thomas had employee Don Edmunds work up a series of drawings, one of which was reportedly rendered directly on a workshop desk. In a comprehensive 1981 feature story in Automobile Quarterly (Vol. 19, No. 3) about the very car detailed here, Thomas remarked humorously that he kept the drawings because people who joined the team later were “always convinced that somewhere there was a roll of prints that had come from some mysterious place that we were working from.”
Regardless of its origins, the design employed 1.0- and 1.3-inch diameter 4130 chrome-moly tubing for the frame, a fully independent front suspension, and a modified 1963 Corvette setup in the rear. The wheelbase was 90.0 inches with a 59.0-inch front and 57.0-inch rear track. Brakes were drums all around behind 15-by-7.0-inch American Racing magnesium wheels. The heart of the diminutive beast was a fuel-injected 327-cubic-inch Chevrolet V-8 mated to an aluminum Corvette four-speed. Due to the Cheetah’s compact dimensions and the rearward mounting of the powertrain, there is no driveshaft; the output shaft drives the rear differential directly through a single universal joint.
Uploaded
March 22nd, 2022
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