[Video] Meet Chevrolet’s Cobra killer | The Cheetah | GRR
Duncan Pittaway is not a man to buy boring cars. He is, famously, the owner of the Fiat S76 “Beast of Turin”. He also owns a pre-war Bugatti Type 35, an Edwardian Monarch and a similar Curtis. So when he bought something from across the pond, you knew it was going to be interesting.
Meet Duncan’s Bill Thomas Cheetah. A car designed to end the reign of Ford and Shelby’s Cobra, never quite lived up to what Thomas and Chevrolet would have wished, but left enough of an impression on the world to still be beloved.
It is pretty much just a five-litre Chevrolet V8 with some wheels attached to it. The driver sits on the rear axle to make sure that the engine could go in the middle of the car despite being afore of the cabin. The exhausts are ducted through said cabin and over the fuel tanks making it extremely hot and the suspension is ever so slightly totally copied from a Lotus.
Altogether it’s a big noisy brute that looks like nothing else around and handles with slightly less anger than a hungry bear. So therefore we love it and loved seeing it at the Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard last year.