Former GM President John F. Gordon's 1964 Cheetah #002 prototype is for sale.
A 1964 Cheetah prototype once owned by the president of General Motors is for sale in Hemmings.
The Cheetah was built by Bill Thomas who, after a successful career tuning and racing Corvettes, wanted to build a Chevrolet-powered car that would rival the Shelby Cobra. However, rather than using an existing chassis as Shelby had done with the AC Ace, Thomas designed the Cheetah from scratch with the secret cooperation of Chevrolet, which was not officially participating in racing at the time.
The engine and transmission are mounted well back in the tube-frame chassis (for better weight distribution), so the Cheetah has no conventional driveshafts. The driver sits essentially on the rear wheels in a narrow, enclosed cockpit. It also has a very short wheelbase of 90.0 inches and a low body weight of 1,750 pounds.
Thomas wanted 100 Cheetahs built to meet race homologation requirements, but the homologation hurdle was later raised to 1,000 production cars. According to Hemmings, only 16 Cheetahs were eventually built, with 11 still in existence.
One of those cars is currently for sale. According to Hemmings, this car, serial number 126364002, was the second prototype Cheetah, ordered from GM for development work, tested at Chevrolet from December 1963 to April 1964, and owned by John F. Gordon, then GM president. John F. Gordon, then president of GM, was the owner.
This prototype differed from the production Cheetah in that it had an aluminum body instead of fiberglass; it was powered by a 327 cubic-inch V-8 engine supplied by a 1963 Corvette, with rare Rochester mechanical fuel injection The car is equipped with the following features. It delivers a maximum output of 360 hp and 350 lb-ft of torque, which is sent to the rear wheels via a four-speed manual transmission.
Cheetah and its creator are not as well known today as Cobra and its creator, Carroll Shelby, but the $2 million asking price puts this Cheetah prototype in the same realm as current Cobra transaction prices.
