215 mph Cheetah ?

[Greg Myers]

https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2018/03/20/after-more-than-50-years-215-mph-cheetahs-owner-ready-to-sell/?refer=news

[Greg Myers]

This car, the  McKee Mark VI, ended up with a HEMI in it. 

[Bill J]

I saw that McKee with the hemi race at PIR back when they had the old, long road course that went out to the desert west of the main track. Made a lot of hemi sounding noises but spent most of it's time spinning out and extricating itself from spins. Sort of tail heavy and over torqued. Fun to see. Back then it was sponsored by Town and Country Plymouth in Phoenix. I saw this a few years back at a Good Guys show and talked to the present owner, very nice man and as you can see, has taken excellent care of the car.

I recall Cheetah's also, neat looking cars, they too spent most of their time spinning out. Too short of a wheelbase. You'd have to be awfully brave to hit 215 in a Cheetah.

[RancheroSteve]

Cool, that's the one I modeled:

Lots of good reference at the Hemmings and the auction house links! Wish I'd had some of that when I was building, but looks like I got most of it reasonably close.

[Miatatom]

Those Chetah's were supposed to be Chevy's answer to the Cobra. They were really evil handling. I knew a guy back in the 90s that vintage raced one. He told me it was a handful.

[Ace-Garageguy]

3 hours ago, Miatatom said:

Those Chetah's were supposed to be Chevy's answer to the Cobra. They were really evil handling. I knew a guy back in the 90s that vintage raced one. He told me it was a handful.

I've driven one. There were three main problems with the Cheetah that certainly would have been sorted had there been more time.

1) Because of the car's too-flexible frame. suspension tuning wasn't very effective. You have to have a dead-stiff chassis in order to set a car up with any hope of repeatability and predictability.

2) The front-mid-engined layout of the car gave it exceptionally good weight distribution, and because the center of mass is well inside the wheelbase, the car is VERY responsive to driver input, very willing to go where it's pointed. You can almost think it into a turn. But then the twisty chassis comes into play, and as the car is cornered hard, the suspension geometry is moving around as the frame flexes. This makes it twitchy, and not at all fun to drive close to the limit of adhesion...and prone to spinning if you're very close to the limit.

3) Because of the front-mid-engined layout, the headers run right next to the driver's feet. Extremely light-weight insulation didn't exist in those days, so the cockpit could be just dammed uncomfortable. It's hard to go fast consistently when the car is fighting you and your feet are on fire and you're being boiled in your own sweat.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Ace-Garageguy

[Greg Myers]

and we still don't have a decent plastic 1/25th - 1/24th model kit.

Slot cars

High dollar resin

1/64th diecast

But no plastic kits.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Greg Myers

[Howard Cohen]

Not enough interest to make a plastic kit I wonder if the resin kits sold well, even then, maybe only 500 copies, not enough for a kit. And the Cheetah did not have a very good race record  

[Miatatom]

3 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

I've driven one. There were three main problems with the Cheetah that certainly would have been sorted had there been more time.

Lucky you! Scary ride, but still, I wouldn't have passed up the chance.

[Greg Myers]

17 hours ago, Howard Cohen said:

Not enough interest to make a plastic kit I wonder if the resin kits sold well, even then, maybe only 500 copies, not enough for a kit. And the Cheetah did not have a very good race record  

 

[Richard Bartrop]

The Blower Bentley didn't have a great record either, and it's probably one of the most iconic British cars ever.  Car nuts have a soft spot for magnificent failures.