Test mules lead hard lives. That’s just the way things are in the automotive industry. Whether it’s factory prototypes or experimental racing cars, testers get rode hard and broken down fast and rarely get any glory for the pain. Its sad sometimes, but its expected, and test cars also perform an invaluable service: where would we be without them? Yet, when a car is a member of a racing fleet and races as such, but also gets used as a platform for experimentation, that’s especially rough.
Often you have heard me mention the trials and tribulations of my little blue Aurora Cheetah. I bought this as a body only way back in 2020 for fairly cheap since it was on the rough side, having a cracked rear screw post and few other little battle scars. It is an original from the ‘60s and one of 4 that I have, in addition to 3 of the newer reproductions from Dash Motorsports, which look similar but structurally are a little different. This car has just been stricken with rotten luck, I suppose, because it always seems that just when I have this thing built, I decide I need a part from it for another car, and it gets robbed.
That kind of thing is not uncommon; I sometimes do swap chassis or wheel styles on cars when I decided that something that’s here will look better there, and so on. Such parts swapping has happened to this car more than most, but that’s not the worst of it, because it has also suffered an indignity only a couple of others ever have: it lost its identity!
Back when I still had the 64-car cap on my racing fleets, I bumped it entirely when Dash came out with their cool “stars and stripes” version. I made up a long, detailed story about how the new Dash body was really the same car with a new paint job after being rebuilt following a wreck. For that to happen, the blue one even lost her name! Originally called “Catapult,” that name transmitted to the new Dash Cheetah when she assumed this blue one’s identity, leaving it without a chassis, without a place in the racing fleet, and without a name.
I decided to redo her up as a Road Crew “special” so for a while she was running around on the HO Highway on a “Tuff Ones” chassis with cool early 70’s style threaded aluminum wheels. She looked good like that, but wouldn’t you know it, she got cut up again when I built my red ’55 Chevy gasser and needed that chassis! Not to worry, though, because by that time, my 64-car cap for the racing fleets had been lifted, so she once again joined the sports car Ultra G numbered racing fleet, mounted on a new light brown chassis similar to the one she once had. She also got the very first set of Vincent’s new Minilite wheels that I acquired! With a new racing number, a new name, and a new driver, she was back in the fray and happy once again…until….
You know that I recently scored a rare and expensive Bauer addition to my sports car fleet, a race-spec MG B coupe I’d been after for a good year and finally found one at a fair price. What wheels would you put on a race-spec MG B? There’s really only one answer, and since that MG was dark green and the light brown chassis looks great on a dark green car, the hapless Cheetah got raped again, losing yet another chassis! Down only to a body again, she must have gone up for sale, but under new ownership, she’s about to return to Drag City…only this time, something is different…
In reality, I can’t continue to remount this car over and over again; the screw posts just won’t take much more, and I’ve already repaired them both multiple times and its all I can do to hold her together now. So the iteration you see here is going to have to be the final one…and I think I can live with that quite nicely! She’s now mounted on a brand new jet black chassis which has been tuned to the hilt and in testing its so fast it can barely stay on the track, even with a stronger than stock moly traction magnet upgrade. She’s wearing the last set of yellow “GT” wheels from Road Race Replicas-the last set I may ever have, since RRR-as I knew it, anyway-is now defunct. The bright yellow wheels with the black chassis and the blue body make for a striking color combo, and she’s now wearing the 4th racing number of her career, and while it’s a duplicate, that’s OK as long as she doesn’t race in the same Group as “Tropicana,” the black and green Chaparral 2F.
The shape of the main air intake of the Cheeta may make her look like she’s smiling, but don’t be fooled; after years of being bounced around my collection like a red-headed step child, this bad cat has a new attitude; she’s tired of being kicked around and stripped for parts; this time, she’s coming back to the track with something to prove!
The bad blue Cheetah is now the property of one Zagan “RAMPAGE” Rhinebach, a California native of German descent about whom little is known. Rhinebach dresses in black from head to toe-even his helmet is black with a single yellow stripe running across it-and he doesn’t talk much, coming across as a driver of brooding intensity. Recently overhauled and equipped with a full race-spec 377 cubic inch SBC just like Bill Thomas would have put in it when she was new, but topped with a very modern fuel injection system instead of carbs, she now wears racing number 4 and sets out for a qualifying run bearing a name that could not be more appropriate: “REVENGE”
She’s back, race fans, and this time she’s going to kick some serious ass! If anyone is going try to steal parts off this baby now, wish them luck, because… they’ll have to catch her first!
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