Greetings fellow slot-heads, ‘tis the final day of September and your humble blogger has been busy at the workbench once again! I am in the process of expanding the sports car fleet from 72 cars to 96 in order to have A, B and C groups of 32 just like the muscle car fleet! This means there’s going to be a lot of duplicates; as I have oft mentioned, there are far fewer sports and sports-racing bodies for the T-Jet platform than there are muscle cars. But hey, a few duplicates never hurt no one, as long as they all have unique racing numbers, right? And, in attempting to keep things interesting, I have just assembled the second example I have acquired of one of the rarest of the sports car bodies out there: the Dash Motorsports rendering of the Cheetah roadster!
This body was a gift from a friend, which was quite generous considering that I was watching it on ePay and even made an offer on it, which was rejected; the seller was looking for a 3-figure price! It would be rude to ask how much my buddy gave for it, but I have an idea: what I know is that it wasn’t cheap! But was it worth it? Well, let’s have a look!
This is mounted on the very first translucent orange Auto World Ultra G chassis I have acquired! I paid as much as a whole slot car just to get the chassis, which came with red tires, so it was no doubt taken from one of those ridiuclous series that Auto World is releasing these days, probably one of those Looney Tunes “Space Jam” models. Considering that October is just a day away, orange seemed like a apropos choice for a body that shows as much of the chassis as the Cheetah does! I’ve had some negative experiences in the past with these translucent colored chassis; the old red and blue ones were very disappointing from a performance perspective, but AW seems to have gotten their act together with the green and orange ones they are releasing now, because this one runs just fine! A good thing, too, as you would expect that from a Cheetah, that rare Chevy-powered supercar from the early 60’s, of which it is believed that only 11 were completed at the factory. Several more were finished subsequently by enthusiasts from leftover parts, and there are clones as well with varying degrees of quality. I finished her off with black “UltraCal” stripes and Road Race Replicas water-slide decals, and a set of black “Bullet” wheels also from RRR, all which seems to offset the white body and the orange chassis quite nicely!
Clones are allowed at the vintage races at Drag City but full replicas are not, so Pierce “PYRO” Powell of Encino, CA must have acquired quite a rare piece here! Since there is only 1 “real” Cheetah roadster known to exist-and even that was originally a coupe which was “decapitated,” one has to assume that this car is another modification on an original, meaning we all hope it was done “back in the day.” Bearing heretofore unused racing #37, this open-top, 327 Corvette-powered beast is named “Kraken” and appears ready to live up to her name with plenty of sound and fury on the track. She certainly looks like the genuine article, being rough around the edges showing a patina and a history of being thrashed on the track, and Powell appears ready to thrash her again, which means every Cobra driver at Drag City had better be checking their mirrors!
The Cheetah is one of the coolest cars of the tail end of the “golden era,” a crazy story that could never happen again, and every one is a treasure; race fans have to be pleased to see this one back on the track where she belongs!
This absolutely looks like a born racer and looks like it’s moving even when standing still. A great addition!