1964 Cheetah Team Clarence Dixon Cadillac No. 33
Bill Thomas’s Masterpiece Could Have Been Chevy’s Cobra killer
The project that he is best known for was in response to one that had come out of another race shop just a few miles away: Carroll Shelby’s Cobra. When the new ’63 Corvette couldn’t outrun the Cobra on the street or on the track, Chevrolet encouraged Thomas to build a Chevypowered car that could. As part
Don Edmunds, full access to the GM parts bin.
That car would be named the “Cheetah,” and it was meant initially as more of a street cruiser than a serious race car, but the plan was to build the 100 required to homologate it for the GT class in which the Cobra competed. Edmunds sourced the main 375-horsepower 327 smallblock V-8, Muncie 4-speed transmission, and independent rear suspension, bolstered by miscellaneous race-bred suspension components. There was no CAD back then; Edmunds laid the components out on the shop floor and used chalk to come up with a 90-inch wheelbase chassis in which the transmission was mounted differential with one universal joint—no driveshaft! That left the engine set more than 2 feet behind the front spindles; this was definitely a mid-engine coupe, which left the driver sitting snugly beside the engine and between the rear tires. Once the lower half of the chassis was completed, they sketched out a crude drawing of their body design
over the chassis. California Metal Shaping made the body pieces for the first two prototypes out of aluminum; subsequent bodies were made by Fiberglass Trends—and later Contemporary Fiberglass— using molds pulled off the original metal body. Aircraft Windshield Company made the Plexiglas windshield and rear window.
To say that the car was sleek and swoopy would be an understatement; it was almost cartoonish, but the shape definitely hinted that something purposeful was going on beneath the skin. The wheels were pushed out to the four corners of the body, leaving very little overhang. With a front track close to 5 feet wide, the car looked low and planted. The tiny “greenhouse” was located at the very rear of the body behind the expansive, forward-tilting front clip, and two gull-wing doors that hinged from the center of the roof offered the only access to the interior. The design lacked A-pillars and enclosed a full roll cage. The driver’s foot box extended forward beside the engine, with the exhaust routed up and over the top of the occupant’s ankles. One driver complained that his feet got so hot while racing that his leather shoes shrunk and made driving extremely painful. The spare tire sat behind the fiberglass bucket seats on the rear deck.
What Thomas and Edmunds had created was a powerful, lightweight, twitchy (can you say “low polar moment of inertia”?), mid-engine coupe that, if it had been developed to its full potential, could have run circles around the Shelby. The cars had issues, no doubt— heat was a big one. The full belly pan and the proximity of the passenger compartment to the engine kept the driver uncomfortably hot—a bad feature for an endurance race car. The original chassis design was made for the street and didn’t have the rigidity needed for endurance racing. Later chassis featured more triangulation and larger tubing. But these were issues that could have been solved in a focused development program. Thomas built fewer than 20 complete cars, but he also sold chassis and bodies separately, so there are no precise numbers for how many cars were actually produced. In 1964, the GT-class homologation requirement changed from
100 to 1,000 cars, and with no feasible way to meet that total, Chevrolet subsequently canceled its support for the program. The last Cheetah came out of BTRC in April 1966.
Replicarz’s first venture into modeling the Cheetah is chassis #009, the Clarence Dixon Cadillac-sponsored car ordered by Jack Goodman in 1964. The company’s decision to do the fire-breathing L88 Cheetah as its first car out of the mold is a nice surprise even though this iteration isn’t the arguably more iconic 377ci small block equipped with Bill Thomas’s special Dual Air Meter Rochester fuel-injection units pointing at the sky. But it’s a well-documented car, so all in all, it’s a nice first pick. Painted in Sebring Silver, with number 33 roundels and “Clarence Dixon Cadillac—Hollywood” livery, the car is racy yet elegant.
The mold work on the model is excellent, capturing the shape and the detail of the real car to a T. Replicarz deserves special praise on that point—even determining the shape is rather complicated given the car’s history.
This car evolved through several phases before arriving at the shape we see here—and as it appeared at the Goodwood Festival of Speed gathering in 2016. It was originally delivered to Jack Goodman as a street car, with rear-exit exhaust and a production-spec 375-horse fuel-injected 327 small block. Evidence of its street-legal origins can be seen on the tail, where it still wears all four brake light/taillight lenses sourced from the Corvette (dedicated racing Cheetahs left Thomas’s shop with just a single pair of taillights), a detail the model faithfully replicates. When Goodman decided to race the car full time, he had BTRC install a host of upgrades, including a race-spec 377 small block with side exhaust and a Dual Air Meter FI manifold
peeking out of the hood. This is how it raced at Riverside in 1964, with Mike Jones at the wheel. The race conversion was fitted with two additional fuel cells mounted outboard on the frame on the sides of the car, which accommodated the fuel requirements for SCCA/ FIA racing. The model features two Le Mans–type fuel caps forward of the doors, just below the windshield. An additional fuel filler on the left rear fills the center-mounted fuel cell common to most Cheetahs, and that too is depicted on the model.
In 1965, it was brought back to BTRC to be refitted with Chevy big-block power—a 396-cubic-inch, 425-horsepower engine—along with dual radiators to help cool the bigger motor and wider rear fender flares to accommodate a wider set of tires mounted on Ansen Sprint wheels. Then, in 1967, it was upgraded again with an L88 aluminum-head
427 race motor. That engine sports a single Holley “Double Pumper” four-barrel carburetor on a dual-plane manifold, necessitating a reversed air scoop in front of the windshield, which can be seen on the model. The car was raced like this for a few years before being retired into a private collection. It was restored to this configuration before reemerging at
Goodwood in 2016. With the exception of the Ansen wheels (Replicarz chose to stick with the classic American Racing mags at all four corners), this Goodwood configuration is how the model is presented.
Four cooling vents in the bonnet allow the twin radiator system with its two electric cooling fans to be seen. At the right angle, you can also see the top of the L88 with its big Holley, and in the scoop opening, you can see the plug wires coming off the distributor. The wheels rotate, but since they’re mounted on solid axles, the fronts don’t have the camber of those of the real car, causing it to sit a little higher than expected.
This car is equipped with only the windshield and the rear window like the real car; the side windows aren’t glazed. The interior, though spartan, has been accurately executed with two fiberglass buckets and belts, plus a steering wheel (either Covico or Grant) and the Hurst Shifter. The instrument cluster includes seven gauges along with the associated switchgear, and they are all rendered accurately.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Part of the enjoyment this model brings is the nice detail work Replicarz has included. While a diecast might have given us more opening panels, doing this car in diecast was never an option. Replicarz did its homework and got the details right, although a few compromises were made for production considerations. Replicarz has come a long way in building its fine line of resin models, and this Cheetah is a long-anticipated and welcome addition to any collection. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.