And on the opposite end of that spectrum was the V-8 Gremlin. One of the Petersen magazines of those days said it understeered so much it could smoke the front tires trying to turn off of a straight line. Neither feature is useful.
So they are to the cars what I asume Tomcats flying through a jet wash are to airplanes? Although I couldn't possibly know this for sure since I don't have the knowledge to back that theory up. Might be that way with any military airplane in a similar situation. Also, I'm most defenitly not refering to Top Gun in an attempt to make a joke, so any trolls are free to try and make fun of me. 😏
@@kennethjackson7574 Had a stock Gremlin,,,,wide tires + short wheel base + slick road.......hold on, a spin is a real possibility on this trip. You could hit a puddle and do a 360 degree.
@@josefolsson5343 Picture holding a dumbbell, arm straight down, and turning it clockwise and counter clockwise. Now picture holding a barbell of the same weight and doing the same thing. Getting the barbell to turn will be harder than it was with the dumbbell, right? The Cheetah is rather like the dumbbell, relatively easy to spin because so much weight is near center. Especially if it’s gone off-track, such as on hard dirt or wet grass. I hope this helps.
Bill Thomas' work w/ the Chevy Corvair is what pushed my mother to buy a turbocharged Corvair in 1964. She Rallye raced the heck out of that car and I got to be her co-pilot, because I was the youngest kid and still needed supervision. My favorite supervision, ever. We clocked hundreds of miles in that Corvair. I own a '65 convertible Corvair as my daily driver and think of Mom every time I get in.
Almost two feet shorter than a VW Beetle! Regardless of one's brand loyalty (Ford/Chevrolet/Mopar/etc.) Mr. Thomas' ingenuity and tenacity should be recognised and celebrated. Well-done video!
USE THIS AS THE CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM THREAD! I have been reading through the comments of the last videos and noted all the critiques and tried to implement the following changes: 1. I removed the hard coded subtitles 2. I tried to slow down my speaking, annunciate better and I added larger pauses between sentences so things don’t seem like one large run on sentence 3. I added images and animated them to make them a bit more engaging than just a regular image. 4. I used shorter clips and more different clips to make the video more visually engaging. I know the microphone settings in this video are a tad bit peaky at certain points so I apologize, I just got a new PC to edit and haven’t nailed the settings yet but I’m working on it! Any other critiques you have please feel free to leave them here. Also please mention and other Cheetah related facts here, it’s difficult to find a lot of info on this car! Thanks everyone for watching though, 1,000 subs in a month is crazy!
This video is a huge improvement to what I already thought was great content! Your videos are so unique and high quality and it's awesome to see a creator taking criticism so well. Keep it up!
Using other people's videos without permission is not the way to go about putting together an informative video, the black cheetah that I am tuning would be one example, try asking people rather than copying their videos, I happen to have an extensive knowledge of Cheetah's both original, and continuations, but since you didn't do the right thing, you'll have to keep searchin
I use to race SCCA back in the late seventies and early eighties . Later on I did a few historic races . The sound of the Cheetah was amazing . You could hear it before you could see it .
One of the very few ‘legend’ cars of the 60s I have NO desire to drive. Looks AND appears designed to want to kill its driver (that’s saying something from the 60s)!
Cheetah Evolution and a few others make Cheetahs now that are state of the art modern versions of the Cheetah. A friend of mine nows owners and has painted a few in flawless finishes.
Really? Shelby took a car someone else built and shoved a Ford V8 in it..not very original or very talented,Shelby=overrated & overpriced .bristol ace? When you take a car that's already existed for multiple years and put an engine in it that it never came with that doesn't make you anything but a f****** mechanic I never understood why people idolize this guy🤣🤣shelby😂😂😂😂see that badge makes my car faster than yours😂😂 hey guys if I put a Ford V8 in this car and call it a cobra you think anyone will notice that all I did was take the front bumper off and put a big engine in it and think I made the car right😂 no.. no , we won't.
@@awaren8375 Then again, that is not the only thing that Shelby did. You may try to be less of a judgmental knowitall, replacing your contempt with curiosity.
It will out run, and out handle the Cobra. Chevy didn't get to race in the same class as the Cobra because the racing administration changed the number you had to build to. compete in the class. Was you had to build 100 cars. They changed the rules to 1000 cars. Chevy pulled the plug. Steering and suspension was designed after a lotus Chevy had in the shop. Brakes were drum front and rear!😬
Great video! As a 9yr old kid,I got to take a ride in the green Alan Green Cheetah on 1st ave so. one Sat. morning with a mchanic.Note that it still has the original drum brakes on it! RIP Bill Thomas.
I bought a Cheetah when I was a teenager as a project. Had no idea what I was doing. Ended up reselling it a few years later for what I paid for it which was $2500. Wish I had it now.
The car I wish I had bought 50-ish years ago was a Dan Gurney Cougar, Gurney’s counter to the Shelby Mustang. The other side of the coin- Shelby v. Thomas, and Shelby v. Gurney. $800. Oh well.
The BT Chevy Cheetah was such a niche tuner product that it's beyond presumptuous to suggest it was the Shelby Cobra's biggest (or even major) rival. Every thing about the Cheetah was derivative and epitomized Duct Tape Engineering, whereas everything Shelby did was bold and involved utilizing actual racing automotive engineering of the era.
If “Duct Tape Engineering” works it works. I like the informal motto of the folks who built the Super Guppy transport airplanes entrusted with hauling Saturn V rocket components cross country: “Build to fit, draw to match, paint to cover.”
yep. thats how I remember the Cheetah, as a cheap knock off of the cobra...still a cool car, but thats how it was viewed by the motor head adults i grew up around
Wow! As a kid my grandfather had a small slot car track in his basement. When my cousins and I were over we'd go down there and race. One of my favorites was a Cheetah. The sixties were cool!
I had the Aurora HO sot cars too, but never could find the Cheetah. I did have 2 - 63 Split widow Vettes though in the Auroras. Good old days! I live in Pittsburgh and can't find any slot car tracks at all anymore and few privately owned ones either. the last commericial one was at a big big hobby shop and it wnet out of business 5 years ago. Sad days!!
Hey Man, You Were Lucky! I Always Wanted A 1/32 Scale Slot Car But I Ended Up With The Aurora HO Track Which I Still Have Somewhere In The Attic. Thank You.
@@thewatcher5271 I was lucky enough to live close to 3 commercial pay to play tracks in the 60's in the Pittsburgh, PA area. My Dad would take me but I had to pay the track fees with my allowances and earnings from cutting neighbors grass etc. Lot of fun in those days!! But it was still pricey. Built my own cars with brass tubing and a frame jig and bought the car body t my local hobby shop. Damn ..... $3.00 was a lot of money in those days!!
@@Thumper68 Old style "Small block" Chevy is still an iron v8 lump of about 5.7 litres or so that weighs about 350 to 450 lbs depending on the spec. In European perspective that is an enormous and very heavy engine, even if it is relatively compact. Of course modern chevy v8's like the LS3 and later versions are a bit lighter because they are constructed from aluminium, but that is not the case here.
@@zztop7306 The quotes around the small are there because the Small Block is only small when compared to the Big Block, but compared to most European engines it is still very big AND heavy. And by the way: cubic inch and (minimum) block size actually ARE related. Cubic inches are bore x stroke and these determine both the height of the cylinder block(s) and the minimum spacing between the cylinders and thus the minimum length of the block (together with other parameters, such as the amount of spacing between the cylinders, etc. )
I seem to recall an episode of the show "Billions" where the main character ("Bobby Axelrod") is walking through his car collection, with a red Cheetah at the center of his collection. He also mentions that he is a billionaire who has everything a man can buy, including a Cheetah.
Ralph Salyer not Sayler. From Hammond Indiana. Gene Crowe was his mechanic and together they built and raced the Cheetah known as the Cro-Sal Special. Also they raced Oldsmobile powered CanAm cars. Very cool history there.
Surprising that a Factory guy would be so short sighted. Difference between trained and self taught, I guess. As a racer you have to figure out a lot of things on the fly. Where the heat is going is certainly one, durability of the suspension is another critical point. 3 lbs per horse power is really difficult to control and keep stuck to the surface without speed and aerodynamics to push it down. I remember seeing it, but knew nothing about it. Thank you for the post!
It’s great to finally know the history of the orange car, my favorite, that I ran on my racetrack that Christmas morning many years ago. I’m guessing it was about 1966 when I was 10.
I had an HO slot car track as a young kid, the Cheetah was my favorite car for sure. 50 some years later I have an all digital german made slot car track upstairs. What did I order for it first? A Cheetah of course, ending up with 2 of them. They are 1/32 to exact scale so they're small compared to other 1/32 cars. They fly!
I wonder if the Cheetah was used as a basis for inspiration when GM produced the Pontiac Solstice/Saturn Sky. I can definitely see the general body shape in the design, especially on the hardtop models
As a kid, I loved the look of the Cheetah. I built a slot car with a vacuum formed Cheetah body. I couldn't wait to get home from school to work on it. When done, it was fast. I won a lot of races. What was cool about this slot car was that when accelerating out of a corner, it'd pull a partial wheelie, impressing onlookers. My father, a meticulous craftsman, would wonder that my cobbled together creations were so fast, handled well.... eat my dust dad. I never knew the history of the Cheetah. Thanks for this.
Back in the mid 60's I was well into the burgeoning slot car hobby. When the the Cox Cheetah kits and clear plastic Cheetah bodies came out, I was fell in love with the body shape of the Cheetah. I hadn't yet learned about the Cheetahs being built as the "Cobra killer", I just knew that the this was the most beautiful race car I had ever seen. I built many a Cheetah slot car racer back then. Fast forward to the early 2000's when slot cars were kind of making a somewhat of a comeback, I got back into the the hobby. Along with the current super-slick bodied cars, I still built a few Cheetahs using the clear bodies I had kept since the 60's. They weren't competitive, but I didn't care. So long as they ran fast and handled well......good enough. My bucket list? To be able to one day drive a real Cheetah. Maybe around a race track, not fast enough to kill myself but to experience the thrill of it all. Yeah!
I used to go to the SCCA races at the Santa Barbara airport in the mid-60s and so saw with my own eyes. The Cheetahs were fun to look at but were just not developed and amounted to dismal failures compared to the Cobras; of the latter, the 289s were so much better at handling than the nose-heavy 427s. BTW, the Corvette Gran Sports were cannon fodder and were absolutely inhaled by both Cobras and even the GT350 mustangs even though they were of a lower class. The most excitement was the small displacement Ferrari V12s going down the runway/straightaway redlined out in top gear; absolutely made your hair stand up. The best performers overall were the Porsche 904s. Best handling in the tight bits were the Mini Cooper S cars.
5:46 it really is no big deal and can only be done with rear independent suspension because the dif is solid mounted while the control arms are sprung..not the entire axle..
About Ralph Salyer, he raced the Cheetah against all out mid engine sports racers, the Chapparal 2, Cooper Ford King Cobra, Genie Chevrolet. The Cheetah never qualified to race in the production class with the Cobra. At least once, the Cheetah came in 1st ahead of all the mid engine racers.
Great video. Always wanted to know more about the cheetah. Had GM put more thought and effort into this, this car would have destroyed the Shelby Cobra. With that insane power to weight ratio, it would have walked away from the Cobra. But of course..... As usual.... GM just had to protect its beloved corvette.
Bingo. I'm an old school fbody gm guy. As much as I love the C2 AND C3 as well, GM really fucked themselves many times because of the "beloved corvette". Fuck corvette.
Since the early 1960s have I attended many sportcar races on many road tracks and NEVER saw a Cheetah beat a Cobra!! It was very rare to happen for sure.
The Cheetah did have some fame at the time. Stromberg made slot cars using Cheetah body shapes over the slot car chassis. I had one in my collection as a kid.
Same. Well, I didn't have a model kit to build but I had a few different scale Cheetah model/toy cars. The funny thing is - I wasn't crazy about them. While they were cool, I preferred the toy cars based on actual cars. I too thought the Cheetah was only a fantasy design. 😄
Love these classic race cars! No active suspension, no paddle shifters, or high tech electronic devices. Nothing but the skills of the driver and the crew.
As a child in the 60s growing up in Northern Virginia inside the Beltway, there were many Pentagon based Military as well as FT. Belvoire, who had returned from Combat duty , and they bought bad ass cars, I got to see Cobras, Shelby Mustangs, Jaguar's etc.. Not to say they were EVERYWHERE, they were the once a week rare sightings that all of us car crazy kids looked for....it was an awesome decade in many regards
A design that was sketched out in chalk on the floor, then built of aluminum which was hammered around a wooden buck. Sound familiar? Exactly the way the World Championship Cobra Daytona Coupe was created by Peter Brock! The Cheetah got a lot of people excited at first as it looked like the car that could do what no one else could do....reel in the Cobra. But it turned out to be another example that looked good on paper, but just never got engineered to the point where it was practical. If there is such a thing as being overpowered, the Cheetah was first in class. Trying to effectively control that much power on such a small wheelbase coupled with an ineffective chassis and suspension helped to doom the car. The fire at the Cheetah factory was the final blow for this ill conceived machine. It never amounted to a Cobra killer after all. RIP Cheetah. The Shelby Cobra still rules! 🤠 🏆 🏁
This car was a dismal failure from its inception. From its drum brakes to its wildly overheating cockpit, it was half-baked and broke almost every time it ran--esp against the cobras. I always felt sorry for the underappreciated Jerry Titus who got saddled with driving it. Finally Talph Salyer cut the entire roof from his trying to survive the heat. And that car I saw launch its flywheel into the air like a giant lethal discus.
I remember watching one of these attempt to race at Laguna Seca in the early sixties. It looked good until it attempted to keep up with the other cars. It was obvious it couldn’t handle corners or the straights. Bill should have stuck with Vettes
Since everyone knows about the Shelby Cobra and they're all over the place these days and there aren't any cheetahs I'm thinking things didn't really work out for the cheetah. It completely failed at putting the Cobra in its place.
Read the history of it. It wasn't Bill Thomas' fault. Little to no support from Chevrolet was a huge burden. There is a fantastic Cheetah kit car available today (Shell Valley) for those that still dream of going fast.
@@philking7805Cobra replicas are but you don't see many Daytonas, which is more comparable to the Cheetah. The Ford SOHC 427 was one of the best designed engines ever built for racing.
I always loved these cars. It is a shame they didn't receive a little more engineering support which could have elevated this car to legendary status. I often wonder how well the Cheetah Evolution addresses these short comings.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 So, for some reason you imagine the wheelbase is what makes the cars spin and creates their handling problems? Ignoring that the Cobra as an identical wheelbase you think this is the problem and not the balance of the car or the suspension geometry but the wheelbase? If that were true it would equate to saying the issues are all driver error...
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 I suspect you're missing some context there. The wheelbase alone is not a cause of the problem no matter which driver you parrot.
That's the thing about Shelby. He had a reputation for being a showman and a shyster who would do anything to sell his cars, but he was a legitimately good engineer and an experienced race car driver who sold real race cars that you could drive on the street. The Cobras were put to the test and won. They were blindingly fast even by today's standards in 427 trim, they were fairly reliable on the race track and the only major shortcoming was the aero generating lift and unpredictable handling up around 140+ mph. This is why Shelby moved on to what was essentially a research project for the GT40, the Daytona Coupe. They put a roof and a fastback on the Cobra, modified the nose and did real wind tunnel testing to create a car that made both front and rear downforce at speed. Most of the aero design-elements that they discovered went into the Ford GT40 cars, which is a major reason why those cars turned out to be so good on the race track. Sure Ford put a lot of support behind those cars, but it was really Shelby who made them what they were. The rear mid-engine layout didn't hurt either, but if the Daytona Coupe had gotten more support than it did, I think it would have possibly been faster at Le Mans just due to lightness. Regardless, the Cheetah didn't win because it wasn't a total package race car, and all of the Cobras and GT cars were. They truly delivered performance-wise. I've driven a Factory 5 replica of a Cobra with a real 427SO motor, which Shelby himself said was the closest to the originals out there, and it was good in every way conceivable. I was surprised because all of the journalists talked about what a handful they were, and I didn't get that impression at all. It was a tied down chassis, it had great traction, it was light and it had more power than you could possibly use on the street without catching a felony. The handling was right up there with a modern front engine Corvette for example. Actually better honestly, because weight distribution was rear biased. There's a reason for their reputation, and it's because they'll still hang with the best today except for the aforementioned aero flaws.
A friend, Donald Long, long ago built a car in Maryland with a fiberglass body and Chevy V-8 that closely resembles the Cheetah. He called his "The Monster" because its low weight made its performance outrageous.
The Cheetah was planned to compete against 289 Cobra, not 427. No matter as it was never a production car so couldn’t compete in production sports car classes. While I love the Cheetah, comparing a purpose built race car to a production sports car regardless of the original plan is pretty worthless.
@@gavinvalentino1313 At a Carlisle Kit Car Show, 10/15 years ago, a guy from N.H., brought 2 Cheetahs, they were in the Big Red Barn, I walked around them everyday, talked to the owner< nice guy? I happened to catch him loading up or unloading, I forgot? I did 100 shows at Carlisle in 10 years as a AMSOIL Dealer, saw 100's of Cobras, But, only 2 Cheetahs!!
Re: Lack of a driveshaft between transmission and differential. I could be wrong, but I don't think the old Renault 4L had one, either. The engine and transmission were reversed, with the transmission just behind the radiator and it was front-wheel drive.
@9:00 I’m not 100% sure, but I can definitely say without much doubt that roll bar has to be in the top 3 of pointless executions (or in other words, guaranteed to RESULT in an execution during any serious crash). Well, except if you’re under 5’ tall, I guess.
What ever happened to the Pontiac Corvette and it's racing version had the straight six etc. I can't remember the name of it but I remember when I was five years old seeing them and loved them
I don't understand why you would compare the GT40 to the Cheetah financially - or in any way for that matter. It was NOT a Shelby, Nor a Cobra. The FORD GT40 was a car entirely financed by FORD because it was a FORD, Shelby only served as a contractor brought in to aid in the cars development. So the comparison (or contrast) is the equivalent of comparing apples to hand grenades. I loved the Cheetah nearly as much as the 427 Cobra (the 289 cars don't figure here), but the Cheetah didn't "CRUSH" the Cobra, nor was it developed to the point it could. Your manipulation of the facts is spotty - though in the interest of creating content I suppose facts are irrelevant.
Was blessed with a Cox Cheetah slot car in my young days . Cox car hade a magnesium frame , Dad put a bigger motor . Many years later I saw a Cheetah on a trailer coming out a storage unit in Windsor Ca. Where is that car now ???
By comparison, our Bocars are much like the Cheetah, albeit several years earlier than even the Cobra. Glass body, tube chassis, Z06 powered, with the engine so far back that the driveshaft is 13" long. Engine is also offset to the right by and inch and three quarters for proper balance fore, aft, and laterally with a 170 pound driver., Brakes are 12" Buick Alfins, suspension is a weird combo of whatever could be sourced but most commonly VW front and live axle rear using a VW rear torsion bar for springs and the lower link in a fourlink.
Apparently because it was light, and cheap at the junkyards. Some bocars had a Jag front, one had 300SL, one of ours has DB Panhard, but most were Type 1 VW. Atleast it's stiff.
Glad you had a peek! I posted Sn. .007 on my channel many moons ago. 007 is the car with DB Panhard front and leafspring rear. Scary machine, but even the Porsche 911 RSR guys hate me. The big Buick brakes allowed me to dive under and beat a '75 RSR into and out of three consecutive corners on two separate laps at HPR in 2011. Needless to say I got protested. He was my best friend after I made him crack a wheel off and stare at that big aluminum drum.
Why do you call it a Shelby Cobra? It's an AC Cobra, AC are an English Sports Car manufacturer. It's an AC with a Ford motor, hardly an American Classic. Just like the GT40 Was a Lola (another English Sports Car manufacturer) with a Ford power unit.
In 1975 or 76 I considered buying one that was used for drag racing. The top had been cut off and I thought it was too bastardized. For $1,900, I wish I had bought it!
What you call weird combination of parts is how it was done back then. Engineering & design was a far cry from today's. Shelby would have gotten no where with out Ford's money. Ford asked him to take over the GT-40 program after initial builder Lola Cars in England first built designed & built it. Ford took it "in house" but was getting nowhere with it.
@@stanleykemp3979 Lola started the project on is own, however, being a small company they didn't have the kind of cash needed to fully develop it. With Ford showing increasing interest they purchased the program and brought it "in house". Ford greatly improved things but we're caught up in that time old trap if you spend a lot of money you get an instant winner. They were already working with Shelby and after seeing his kind of results based on racing smarts it was only a natural they commissioned him to take over. The rest is history.
@@stanleykemp3979 Thank you. Having been around back then I enjoy "educating" the younger racing generation. I'm now doing a monthly online column and have begun work on a book of racing memoirs.
I had one of these in the '60s...the fastest car on our aurora track, lol. I didn't even know this was a real car until last year, almost 60 years later....thanks inter-web....
"Cheetahs are perfectly balanced cars....once they start spinning they never stop."
Mark Donohue.
yes, you are right. And ... RedBull should KEEEP OUT !!! of the Pit Area the Vather of Max !!!
And on the opposite end of that spectrum was the V-8 Gremlin. One of the Petersen magazines of those days said it understeered so much it could smoke the front tires trying to turn off of a straight line. Neither feature is useful.
So they are to the cars what I asume Tomcats flying through a jet wash are to airplanes? Although I couldn't possibly know this for sure since I don't have the knowledge to back that theory up. Might be that way with any military airplane in a similar situation. Also, I'm most defenitly not refering to Top Gun in an attempt to make a joke, so any trolls are free to try and make fun of me. 😏
@@kennethjackson7574 Had a stock Gremlin,,,,wide tires + short wheel base + slick road.......hold on, a spin is a real possibility on this trip. You could hit a puddle and do a 360 degree.
@@josefolsson5343 Picture holding a dumbbell, arm straight down, and turning it clockwise and counter clockwise. Now picture holding a barbell of the same weight and doing the same thing. Getting the barbell to turn will be harder than it was with the dumbbell, right? The Cheetah is rather like the dumbbell, relatively easy to spin because so much weight is near center. Especially if it’s gone off-track, such as on hard dirt or wet grass. I hope this helps.
Bill Thomas' work w/ the Chevy Corvair is what pushed my mother to buy a turbocharged Corvair in 1964. She Rallye raced the heck out of that car and I got to be her co-pilot, because I was the youngest kid and still needed supervision. My favorite supervision, ever. We clocked hundreds of miles in that Corvair. I own a '65 convertible Corvair as my daily driver and think of Mom every time I get in.
Your mom sounds pretty cool
@@monkeyearcheese420 I'm slightly biased, but yeah, she was a really cool mother. She was an artist, as well as an avid Rallye racer.
Awesome momma. Mine had a built trans-am and I could get her to race red light to red light, or smoke the tires off.....but rally racing, Wow
My mother dragged a Roadrunner got to drive that car in her lap.
My mother was a artist to!
Almost two feet shorter than a VW Beetle! Regardless of one's brand loyalty (Ford/Chevrolet/Mopar/etc.) Mr. Thomas' ingenuity and tenacity should be recognised and celebrated. Well-done video!
I couldn't believe the length but I Googled it and you are right. Well, 20 inches but damned near 2 feet. Hard to imagine.
USE THIS AS THE CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM THREAD!
I have been reading through the comments of the last videos and noted all the critiques and tried to implement the following changes:
1. I removed the hard coded subtitles
2. I tried to slow down my speaking, annunciate better and I added larger pauses between sentences so things don’t seem like one large run on sentence
3. I added images and animated them to make them a bit more engaging than just a regular image.
4. I used shorter clips and more different clips to make the video more visually engaging.
I know the microphone settings in this video are a tad bit peaky at certain points so I apologize, I just got a new PC to edit and haven’t nailed the settings yet but I’m working on it!
Any other critiques you have please feel free to leave them here. Also please mention and other Cheetah related facts here, it’s difficult to find a lot of info on this car!
Thanks everyone for watching though, 1,000 subs in a month is crazy!
your speak being speedy sometimes in this video, but i know you will slow it too in the future.
This video is a huge improvement to what I already thought was great content! Your videos are so unique and high quality and it's awesome to see a creator taking criticism so well. Keep it up!
@@rileyberkowitz thank you for the kind words, I’m just trying to make good content that people enjoy!
1
Using other people's videos without permission is not the way to go about putting together an informative video, the black cheetah that I am tuning would be one example, try asking people rather than copying their videos, I happen to have an extensive knowledge of Cheetah's both original, and continuations, but since you didn't do the right thing, you'll have to keep searchin
Saw one race at Road America , loudest car at the event , a hoot to watch. I will always remember the Cox gas powered model when I was a kid.
I use to race SCCA back in the late seventies and early eighties . Later on I did a few historic races . The sound of the Cheetah was amazing . You could hear it before you could see it .
One of the very few ‘legend’ cars of the 60s I have NO desire to drive. Looks AND appears designed to want to kill its driver (that’s saying something from the 60s)!
You can still usually watch a SOCAL Cheetah and the coupe at vintage/historic RA races.
The whole story sounds like another whining GM ass clown. Just another Wan 2 Bee😢
Was just at RA for the vintage weathertech challenge this weekend and the cheetah dominated everything as always!
One of my favorites from the sixties. I remember have a slot car with a cheetah body on it. Those were the days
The Cheetah made a great slot car body, low and wide. Slot cars were great fun. A great time to be a kid.
I admired my Cheetah slot car for many hours as a kid. It helped making me a petrol head.
@carmineredd Strombecker😃
the Slot car race tracks :) we had one track/store in my area, with 3 major hobby shops ...those were great times
Had one from Strombecker, one of my favorites
Gorgeous car, undoubtedly. Shame it didn't perform accordingly. Moral of the story: There is only one Carroll Shelby.
Cheetah Evolution and a few others make Cheetahs now that are state of the art modern versions of the Cheetah. A friend of mine nows owners and has painted a few in flawless finishes.
Really? Shelby took a car someone else built and shoved a Ford V8 in it..not very original or very talented,Shelby=overrated & overpriced .bristol ace? When you take a car that's already existed for multiple years and put an engine in it that it never came with that doesn't make you anything but a f****** mechanic I never understood why people idolize this guy🤣🤣shelby😂😂😂😂see that badge makes my car faster than yours😂😂 hey guys if I put a Ford V8 in this car and call it a cobra you think anyone will notice that all I did was take the front bumper off and put a big engine in it and think I made the car right😂 no.. no , we won't.
@@awaren8375 Then again, that is not the only thing that Shelby did. You may try to be less of a judgmental knowitall, replacing your contempt with curiosity.
It will out run, and out handle the Cobra. Chevy didn't get to race in the same class as the Cobra because the racing administration changed the number you had to build to. compete in the class. Was you had to build 100 cars. They changed the rules to 1000 cars. Chevy pulled the plug. Steering and suspension was designed after a lotus Chevy had in the shop.
Brakes were drum front and rear!😬
@@charlesharper7292 I see that "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda": is still the favorite tune of GM fans.
Great video! As a 9yr old kid,I got to take a ride in the green Alan Green Cheetah on 1st ave so. one Sat. morning with a mchanic.Note that it still has the original drum brakes on it! RIP Bill Thomas.
That’s an awesome story!
My dad has the pic of that car in his office at the Bardahl plant, cool car!
This generation will never know the joy of drum brakes and bias ply tires :)
I bought a Cheetah when I was a teenager as a project. Had no idea what I was doing. Ended up reselling it a few years later for what I paid for it which was $2500. Wish I had it now.
The car I wish I had bought 50-ish years ago was a Dan Gurney Cougar, Gurney’s counter to the Shelby Mustang. The other side of the coin- Shelby v. Thomas, and Shelby v. Gurney. $800. Oh well.
@1:13 My dad was the owner of the Alan Green Chevy cheetah before it's current owner that resorted it the current green racing colors.
The BT Chevy Cheetah was such a niche tuner product that it's beyond presumptuous to suggest it was the Shelby Cobra's biggest (or even major) rival. Every thing about the Cheetah was derivative and epitomized Duct Tape Engineering, whereas everything Shelby did was bold and involved utilizing actual racing automotive engineering of the era.
If “Duct Tape Engineering” works it works. I like the informal motto of the folks who built the Super Guppy transport airplanes entrusted with hauling Saturn V rocket components cross country: “Build to fit, draw to match, paint to cover.”
yep. thats how I remember the Cheetah, as a cheap knock off of the cobra...still a cool car, but thats how it was viewed by the motor head adults i grew up around
The Cobra is neither a Shelby, nor original. It is an AC Ace, with Ford badges, beefed up chassis, and Ford engines.
Wow! As a kid my grandfather had a small slot car track in his basement.
When my cousins and I were over we'd go down there and race. One of my favorites was a Cheetah. The sixties were cool!
same here i had a cheetah slot car i painted metallic green and it won all the races
I was gonna say that...that was out Marx layout in basement..the other car was a bird cage Maserati...
The new digital slot setups from Carrera are a blast! They do a lot more than the old school sets did.
Cars can be rockets right out of the box.
The Shelby is pure art, but the Cheetah is something else. Nice video
The Cheetah was a death trap! Chevy saw it and wanted nothing to do with it.
I remember the Cheetahs! As a kid I had several Cheeta slot cars 1/24 and 1/32 scale. They were great too! Certainly a sweet ride!
Cool. I had a Thunderjet 500 (HO) Cheetah when I was a kid.
I had the Aurora HO sot cars too, but never could find the Cheetah. I did have 2 - 63 Split widow Vettes though in the Auroras. Good old days! I live in Pittsburgh and can't find any slot car tracks at all anymore and few privately owned ones either. the last commericial one was at a big big hobby shop and it wnet out of business 5 years ago. Sad days!!
@@johnkemas7344check out Mark's model World Canton Ohio might be worth the drive
Hey Man, You Were Lucky! I Always Wanted A 1/32 Scale Slot Car But I Ended Up With The Aurora HO Track Which I Still Have Somewhere In The Attic. Thank You.
@@thewatcher5271 I was lucky enough to live close to 3 commercial pay to play tracks in the 60's in the Pittsburgh, PA area. My Dad would take me but I had to pay the track fees with my allowances and earnings from cutting neighbors grass etc. Lot of fun in those days!! But it was still pricey. Built my own cars with brass tubing and a frame jig and bought the car body t my local hobby shop. Damn ..... $3.00 was a lot of money in those days!!
1500lbs = about 675kg. That is already remarkable, but nearly unbelievable with a heavy cast iron "small" block V8 on board.
Pretty sure a stock beetle is around 1600 lbs. That's insane power to weight in the cheetah
Small block Chevy not that heavy really and much more compact then even new v8 engines
@@Thumper68 Old style "Small block" Chevy is still an iron v8 lump of about 5.7 litres or so that weighs about 350 to 450 lbs depending on the spec. In European perspective that is an enormous and very heavy engine, even if it is relatively compact. Of course modern chevy v8's like the LS3 and later versions are a bit lighter because they are constructed from aluminium, but that is not the case here.
I'm not sure why the quotes for small. The block size has nothing to do with the overall cubic inch of the engine.
@@zztop7306 The quotes around the small are there because the Small Block is only small when compared to the Big Block, but compared to most European engines it is still very big AND heavy. And by the way: cubic inch and (minimum) block size actually ARE related. Cubic inches are bore x stroke and these determine both the height of the cylinder block(s) and the minimum spacing between the cylinders and thus the minimum length of the block (together with other parameters, such as the amount of spacing between the cylinders, etc. )
I seem to recall an episode of the show "Billions" where the main character ("Bobby Axelrod") is walking through his car collection, with a red Cheetah at the center of his collection. He also mentions that he is a billionaire who has everything a man can buy, including a Cheetah.
Now that is a cool reference!
Fascinating! First contact and you have thumbs up, subscription and white bell.
Good stuff!
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the video and thanks for becoming part of the channel!
Ralph Salyer not Sayler.
From Hammond Indiana.
Gene Crowe was his mechanic and together they built and raced the Cheetah known as the Cro-Sal Special.
Also they raced Oldsmobile powered CanAm cars.
Very cool history there.
This was one of my favorite hot wheels when I was a kid. So aggressive looking
Love the content bud. Binged all your vids while I was out on a run. Excited for more vids on quirky cars.
Thank you so much for watching, glad you enjoyed them!
a footnote in American production and Racing...cool looking cars!
Great video! I'd seen this car before but knew almost nothing about the story behind it.
Surprising that a Factory guy would be so short sighted. Difference between trained and self taught, I guess. As a racer you have to figure out a lot of things on the fly. Where the heat is going is certainly one, durability of the suspension is another critical point. 3 lbs per horse power is really difficult to control and keep stuck to the surface without speed and aerodynamics to push it down. I remember seeing it, but knew nothing about it. Thank you for the post!
It’s great to finally know the history of the orange car, my favorite, that I ran on my racetrack that Christmas morning many years ago. I’m guessing it was about 1966 when I was 10.
I had an HO slot car track as a young kid, the Cheetah was my favorite car for sure.
50 some years later I have an all digital german made slot car track upstairs.
What did I order for it first? A Cheetah of course, ending up with 2 of them.
They are 1/32 to exact scale so they're small compared to other 1/32 cars. They fly!
I wonder if the Cheetah was used as a basis for inspiration when GM produced the Pontiac Solstice/Saturn Sky. I can definitely see the general body shape in the design, especially on the hardtop models
Never crossed my mind!👍
So much I never knew about that car. Had i known, i wouldnt have passed when the opportunity to buy a rolling chassis presented itself to me!
One of the Firestone kids had one when I was at Parsons' college in 1966. That thing was a real beast.
As a kid, I loved the look of the Cheetah.
I built a slot car with a vacuum formed Cheetah body. I couldn't wait to get home from school to work on it. When done, it was fast. I won a lot of races.
What was cool about this slot car was that when accelerating out of a corner, it'd pull a partial wheelie, impressing onlookers.
My father, a meticulous craftsman, would wonder that my cobbled together creations were so fast, handled well.... eat my dust dad.
I never knew the history of the Cheetah. Thanks for this.
Back in the mid 60's I was well into the burgeoning slot car hobby. When the the Cox Cheetah kits and clear plastic Cheetah bodies came out, I was fell in love with the body shape of the Cheetah. I hadn't yet learned about the Cheetahs being built as the "Cobra killer", I just knew that the this was the most beautiful race car I had ever seen. I built many a Cheetah slot car racer back then.
Fast forward to the early 2000's when slot cars were kind of making a somewhat of a comeback, I got back into the the hobby. Along with the current super-slick bodied cars, I still built a few Cheetahs using the clear bodies I had kept since the 60's. They weren't competitive, but I didn't care. So long as they ran fast and handled well......good enough.
My bucket list? To be able to one day drive a real Cheetah. Maybe around a race track, not fast enough to kill myself but to experience the thrill of it all. Yeah!
I used to go to the SCCA races at the Santa Barbara airport in the mid-60s and so saw with my own eyes. The Cheetahs were fun to look at but were just not developed and amounted to dismal failures compared to the Cobras; of the latter, the 289s were so much better at handling than the nose-heavy 427s. BTW, the Corvette Gran Sports were cannon fodder and were absolutely inhaled by both Cobras and even the GT350 mustangs even though they were of a lower class.
The most excitement was the small displacement Ferrari V12s going down the runway/straightaway redlined out in top gear; absolutely made your hair stand up. The best performers overall were the Porsche 904s. Best handling in the tight bits were the Mini Cooper S cars.
The more I think about the Cheetah the more it resembles a sprint car packaged differently.
5:46 it really is no big deal and can only be done with rear independent suspension because the dif is solid mounted while the control arms are sprung..not the entire axle..
I heard of the cheetah but didn't know it was that light! Thanks for the information!
anytime, thanks for watching!
Finally information on the cheetah, thanks
About Ralph Salyer, he raced the Cheetah against all out mid engine sports racers, the Chapparal 2, Cooper Ford King Cobra, Genie Chevrolet. The Cheetah never qualified to race in the production class with the Cobra. At least once, the Cheetah came in 1st ahead of all the mid engine racers.
This is such an awesome story! Thank you!
3:09 How gracious of the king to lead his people to the start of the race. How humble of him. 🤴 All hail king Supra the 4th!
We built a Triumph. A 350 Chevy motor, 4 speed Olds automatic trans. We ended up with a 1" long driveshaft. At least we didn't have to balance it.
Great video. Always wanted to know more about the cheetah. Had GM put more thought and effort into this, this car would have destroyed the Shelby Cobra. With that insane power to weight ratio, it would have walked away from the Cobra.
But of course..... As usual.... GM just had to protect its beloved corvette.
Bingo. I'm an old school fbody gm guy. As much as I love the C2 AND C3 as well, GM really fucked themselves many times because of the "beloved corvette". Fuck corvette.
Since the early 1960s have I attended many sportcar races on many road tracks and NEVER saw a Cheetah beat a Cobra!! It was very rare to happen for sure.
The Cheetah did have some fame at the time. Stromberg made slot cars using Cheetah body shapes over the slot car chassis. I had one in my collection as a kid.
Thanks for an interesting documentary short about this car! Think I saw a video with this car many years ago, but with the v8 being replaced by a v16!
I think I saw a video about a cheetah getting a v12 but I never heard of someone v16 swapping one 😱
beautiful car - never seen this before !
I built a plastic model kit called "Cheetah" in the mid 60s. I never knew it was a real car.
Same. Well, I didn't have a model kit to build but I had a few different scale Cheetah model/toy cars. The funny thing is - I wasn't crazy about them. While they were cool, I preferred the toy cars based on actual cars. I too thought the Cheetah was only a fantasy design. 😄
Love these classic race cars! No active suspension, no paddle shifters, or high tech electronic devices. Nothing but the skills of the driver and the crew.
Indeed, a true raw experience!
As a child during this period the Cheetah was always the ultimate car for me.
That's why it's rare. The beautiful thought of it was there but not enough to pass the test.
Design and putting that design into practice are two very different things.
Being born in '59 I know that it is better than I know, watching this period come into it's OWN!
As a child in the 60s growing up in Northern Virginia inside the Beltway, there were many Pentagon based Military as well as FT. Belvoire, who had returned from Combat duty , and they bought bad ass cars, I got to see Cobras, Shelby Mustangs, Jaguar's etc.. Not to say they were EVERYWHERE, they were the once a week rare sightings that all of us car crazy kids looked for....it was an awesome decade in many regards
A design that was sketched out in chalk on the floor, then built of aluminum which was hammered around a wooden buck. Sound familiar? Exactly the way the World Championship Cobra Daytona Coupe was created by Peter Brock!
The Cheetah got a lot of people excited at first as it looked like the car that could do what no one else could do....reel in the Cobra. But it turned out to be another example that looked good on paper, but just never got engineered to the point where it was practical. If there is such a thing as being overpowered, the Cheetah was first in class. Trying to effectively control that much power on such a small wheelbase coupled with an ineffective chassis and suspension helped to doom the car. The fire at the Cheetah factory was the final blow for this ill conceived machine. It never amounted to a Cobra killer after all. RIP Cheetah. The Shelby Cobra still rules! 🤠 🏆 🏁
I always wondered what would happen if the transmission was hooked directly to the differential with one u-joint.
Carol Shelby didn’t originally build the GT-40 he came on to help fix it after.
This car was a dismal failure from its inception. From its drum brakes to its wildly overheating cockpit, it was half-baked and broke almost every time it ran--esp against the cobras. I always felt sorry for the underappreciated Jerry Titus who got saddled with driving it. Finally Talph Salyer cut the entire roof from his trying to survive the heat. And that car I saw launch its flywheel into the air like a giant lethal discus.
I wouldn't be surprised if some Cheetah owner swapped in a junkyard 5.3 LS....😂
Yeah,
I'll take a 427 Cobra!
I remember watching one of these attempt to race at Laguna Seca in the early sixties. It looked good until it attempted to keep up with the other cars. It was obvious it couldn’t handle corners or the straights. Bill should have stuck with Vettes
This was my favorite hot wheel
Since everyone knows about the Shelby Cobra and they're all over the place these days and there aren't any cheetahs I'm thinking things didn't really work out for the cheetah. It completely failed at putting the Cobra in its place.
Read the history of it. It wasn't Bill Thomas' fault. Little to no support from Chevrolet was a huge burden.
There is a fantastic Cheetah kit car available today (Shell Valley) for those that still dream of going fast.
Cobra's aren't "all over the place" but replicas are
Well they weren’t allowed too
Look into why ford “donated” money to the SCCA and there were rule changes. And yes then Shelby saw the cheetah run he was scared.
@@philking7805Cobra replicas are but you don't see many Daytonas, which is more comparable to the Cheetah. The Ford SOHC 427 was one of the best designed engines ever built for racing.
I always loved these cars. It is a shame they didn't receive a little more engineering support which could have elevated this car to legendary status. I often wonder how well the Cheetah Evolution addresses these short comings.
Pretty sure the wheelbase was a big part of the problem with how these cars handled. They like to spin.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 So, for some reason you imagine the wheelbase is what makes the cars spin and creates their handling problems?
Ignoring that the Cobra as an identical wheelbase you think this is the problem and not the balance of the car or the suspension geometry but the wheelbase? If that were true it would equate to saying the issues are all driver error...
@@willstikken5619 I'm just repeating Mark Donohue's insights about the car. He's not really known for driver error.
@@willstikken5619 come now. That attitude is not needed
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 I suspect you're missing some context there. The wheelbase alone is not a cause of the problem no matter which driver you parrot.
Most awesome looking car ever
That's the thing about Shelby. He had a reputation for being a showman and a shyster who would do anything to sell his cars, but he was a legitimately good engineer and an experienced race car driver who sold real race cars that you could drive on the street. The Cobras were put to the test and won. They were blindingly fast even by today's standards in 427 trim, they were fairly reliable on the race track and the only major shortcoming was the aero generating lift and unpredictable handling up around 140+ mph. This is why Shelby moved on to what was essentially a research project for the GT40, the Daytona Coupe. They put a roof and a fastback on the Cobra, modified the nose and did real wind tunnel testing to create a car that made both front and rear downforce at speed. Most of the aero design-elements that they discovered went into the Ford GT40 cars, which is a major reason why those cars turned out to be so good on the race track. Sure Ford put a lot of support behind those cars, but it was really Shelby who made them what they were. The rear mid-engine layout didn't hurt either, but if the Daytona Coupe had gotten more support than it did, I think it would have possibly been faster at Le Mans just due to lightness. Regardless, the Cheetah didn't win because it wasn't a total package race car, and all of the Cobras and GT cars were. They truly delivered performance-wise. I've driven a Factory 5 replica of a Cobra with a real 427SO motor, which Shelby himself said was the closest to the originals out there, and it was good in every way conceivable. I was surprised because all of the journalists talked about what a handful they were, and I didn't get that impression at all. It was a tied down chassis, it had great traction, it was light and it had more power than you could possibly use on the street without catching a felony. The handling was right up there with a modern front engine Corvette for example. Actually better honestly, because weight distribution was rear biased. There's a reason for their reputation, and it's because they'll still hang with the best today except for the aforementioned aero flaws.
Says the guy with no video content 🤣🤣
Great burn Gary.
Ooh I love the Cheetah. Great improvement on this video!
Thank you! I am glad you liked it 😀
A great story!
A friend, Donald Long, long ago built a car in Maryland with a fiberglass body and Chevy V-8 that closely resembles the Cheetah. He called his "The Monster" because its low weight made its performance outrageous.
Cool looking car
Seems to me one of these had been in a print ad for Quaker State oil.
The Cheetah was planned to compete against 289 Cobra, not 427. No matter as it was never a production car so couldn’t compete in production sports car classes. While I love the Cheetah, comparing a purpose built race car to a production sports car regardless of the original plan is pretty worthless.
Fun video 👍
Man!! That car was practically a go cart with a V-8 engine in it.
This dude sounds like like Mike from Bug Muscle. Legend!
3:49 hey jerma985 here showing off my new car
Pretty much 4 out of 5 Shelby Cobras I've seen in shows are Kit Car Replicas..
4 out of five?
So of the car shows you've attended, 20% of the Cobras have been authentic multi-multi-million$$$ rarities?
Nope.
@@gavinvalentino1313 At a Carlisle Kit Car Show, 10/15 years ago, a guy from N.H., brought 2 Cheetahs, they were in the Big Red Barn, I walked around them everyday, talked to the owner< nice guy? I happened to catch him loading up or unloading, I forgot? I did 100 shows at Carlisle in 10 years as a AMSOIL Dealer, saw 100's of Cobras, But, only 2 Cheetahs!!
That's because there weren't many real Cobras made....
And the real ones cost MILLIONS.
If 20% of the Cobras you've seen were real, you're doing pretty well.
Hell, if they're not cobbled together out of Fox body parts you're doing decent.
I always loved this car.
The TVR Griffith and the cheetah were very similar in design at the same time. Got to love a small block American V8 in a small lightweight body.
*Thank god for a red arrow in the thumbnail, just like every other channel overusing silly red arrows since around 2002.*
I watched one race at Riverside International Raceway back in the day,,,
Would have been a great car if Goverment Motors helped fund it.
Wow...never heard about the cheetah 🐆 great little machine 😀 👍
AC brought out a car called the 428 which was gorgeous, especially the spider but very very rare.
A lot of cobras only had 428's in them. You could get it swapped if you complained.
Re: Lack of a driveshaft between transmission and differential. I could be wrong, but I don't think the old Renault 4L had one, either. The engine and transmission were reversed, with the transmission just behind the radiator and it was front-wheel drive.
SPRINT cars have direct drive-no shaft,pushing more HP and they're on dirt !! So under rated
Reminds one of Sno Jet's awesome 1972 Thunder Jet
I was at Laguna seca to see that #8 car race in the video.
The Bill Thomas Cheetah. When almost is enough.
AMAZING
Indeed!
@9:00 I’m not 100% sure, but I can definitely say without much doubt that roll bar has to be in the top 3 of pointless executions (or in other words, guaranteed to RESULT in an execution during any serious crash). Well, except if you’re under 5’ tall, I guess.
Maybe the history of the hemi back to the 231
When it comes to legendary cars - trust a chicken farmer.
LOL so true
What ever happened to the Pontiac Corvette and it's racing version had the straight six etc. I can't remember the name of it but I remember when I was five years old seeing them and loved them
I don't understand why you would compare the GT40 to the Cheetah financially - or in any way for that matter.
It was NOT a Shelby, Nor a Cobra.
The FORD GT40 was a car entirely financed by FORD because it was a FORD, Shelby only served as a contractor brought in to aid in the cars development.
So the comparison (or contrast) is the equivalent of comparing apples to hand grenades.
I loved the Cheetah nearly as much as the 427 Cobra (the 289 cars don't figure here), but the Cheetah didn't "CRUSH" the Cobra, nor was it developed to the point it could.
Your manipulation of the facts is spotty - though in the interest of creating content I suppose facts are irrelevant.
th-cam.com/video/3VDak_a84KI/w-d-xo.html
Was blessed with a Cox Cheetah slot car in my young days . Cox car hade a magnesium frame , Dad put a bigger motor . Many years later I saw a Cheetah on a trailer coming out a storage unit in Windsor Ca. Where is that car now ???
By comparison, our Bocars are much like the Cheetah, albeit several years earlier than even the Cobra. Glass body, tube chassis, Z06 powered, with the engine so far back that the driveshaft is 13" long. Engine is also offset to the right by and inch and three quarters for proper balance fore, aft, and laterally with a 170 pound driver.,
Brakes are 12" Buick Alfins, suspension is a weird combo of whatever could be sourced but most commonly VW front and live axle rear using a VW rear torsion bar for springs and the lower link in a fourlink.
Why would someone put a crap VW suspension on a tube frame?
Apparently because it was light, and cheap at the junkyards.
Some bocars had a Jag front, one had 300SL, one of ours has DB Panhard, but most were Type 1 VW. Atleast it's stiff.
@@LordMekanicus I had to search what a Bocar was but they sound pretty interesting.
Glad you had a peek! I posted Sn. .007 on my channel many moons ago.
007 is the car with DB Panhard front and leafspring rear.
Scary machine, but even the Porsche 911 RSR guys hate me. The big Buick brakes allowed me to dive under and beat a '75 RSR into and out of three consecutive corners on two separate laps at HPR in 2011. Needless to say I got protested.
He was my best friend after I made him crack a wheel off and stare at that big aluminum drum.
@@LordMekanicus How much fade do the drums get, compared to a disk brake setup?
Why do you call it a Shelby Cobra? It's an AC Cobra, AC are an English Sports Car manufacturer. It's an AC with a Ford motor, hardly an American Classic. Just like the GT40 Was a Lola (another English Sports Car manufacturer) with a Ford power unit.
In 1975 or 76 I considered buying one that was used for drag racing. The top had been cut off and I thought it was too bastardized. For $1,900, I wish I had bought it!
Now that would have been a deal!
How many were made in total? Never heard of the cheetah, and I grew up in Detroit in the 1950-60-70.
Saw it run at Times Riverside GP
Love it.
What you call weird combination of parts is how it was done back then. Engineering & design was a far cry from today's. Shelby would have gotten no where with out Ford's money. Ford asked him to take over the GT-40 program after initial builder Lola Cars in England first built designed & built it. Ford took it "in house" but was getting nowhere with it.
glad someone finally gave credit to the Lola as being the grand daddy of the LM winnner!
@@stanleykemp3979
Lola started the project on is own, however, being a small company they didn't have the kind of cash needed to fully develop it. With Ford showing increasing interest they purchased the program and brought it "in house". Ford greatly improved things but we're caught up in that time old trap if you spend a lot of money you get an instant winner. They were already working with Shelby and after seeing his kind of results based on racing smarts it was only a natural they commissioned him to take over. The rest is history.
@@stanleykemp3979 Thank you. Having been around back then I enjoy "educating" the younger racing generation. I'm now doing a monthly online column and have begun work on a book of racing memoirs.
I had one those it went like hell yeah 1/24 scale slot car
I had one of these in the '60s...the fastest car on our aurora track, lol. I didn't even know this was a real car until last year, almost 60 years later....thanks inter-web....