Ever see a real Cheetah

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Ashley Page · #1 Post by **Ashley Page** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 12:28 am

What a piece of junk. A rare and valuable designation for a car does not guarantee that it also is well put together and of high quality. I stumbled onto one last week in Ca. From riding by in my car I thought it was one of the kits and stopped to have a look. I quickly realized that it was the real thing - the first one I have ever seen up close. Took a lot of pictures. It has to rank as one of the biggest pieces of crap wrapped in an eye catching body to ever be produced. It never fulfilled its goal of being homolagated.

Hope I have not offended anyone who might own one or is nuts about them. Seeing this car in the flesh for the first time burst a bubble for me. This car is all original and will be entered at Pebble this year as an original car. It must be worth a ton as only a few are still around.

The fuel tank mounting is really nice

Cliff Murray · #2 Post by **Cliff Murray** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 7:43 am

I love it! It's exactly what you would expect as a road racer built by American hot rodders. Cool enough to be used as a body for the fast slot cars that kids/adults of the day raced against Lolas and Chaparrals at the local track. Back then Cheetah=macho, Porsche=girly. Yeah, it didn't work great, but it was cool!

Eric Gibeaut · #3 Post by **Eric Gibeaut** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 8:11 am

Piece of junk?! What do you think of a real Cobra? Similar in so many ways as the Cheetah was built to compete against them-and did quite well too. I would LOVE to have a Cheetah in my garage-even if none of the numbers match......Eric

Ashley Page · #4 Post by **Ashley Page** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 9:55 am

Eric Gibeaut wrote:Piece of junk?! What do you think of a real Cobra? Similar in so many ways as the Cheetah was built to compete against them-and did quite well too. I would LOVE to have a Cheetah in my garage-even if none of the numbers match......Eric

Yes, junk, in my opinion which is worth a cup of coffee if you also have a couple of $'s to go with it.

Doesn't mean I would turn one down for the purpose of selling it as they are very valuable and collectable. Even if I owned one and restored it, I would still call it a POS.

My opinion is no reflection on anyone who owns one, works on them or likes them.

The Cobra is a much nicer car.

I don't know much about the Cheetah but am guesing that the whole project was underfunded and lacked support at GM. This car looked like a first run prototype and it was the last one built. It looks thrown together in the fashion of a Locust using junk yard parts and some tubing. The Locust is a play on "low cost" and is the name given to some cars built as a copy of a Super 7. The goal of some builders it to see how cheeply they can build a car. Some of these turn out very cool and some look like junk.