Duncan Pittaway has discovered a means into a really unique British membership: make an entire lot of noise with a really uncommon American cat. His 1963 Cheetah, simply one in all maybe 10 of the slinky Chevy-powered race vehicles constructed by California racer Bill Thomas to tackle the Shelby Cobra, was a head-turning and ear-shattering spotlight at this year’s Goodwood Revival.
The invitation-only Revival, hosted by Charles Gordon-Lennox, the eleventh Duke of Richmond, at his nation property in southern England, is usually the unique playground of the ultra-rich who can afford the classic racing Ferraris, Bugattis, Jaguars, and Cobras which can be the celebs of the grid. But Pittaway, a land surveyor from Bristol, who’s already a minor YouTube celebrity due to his 1910 Fiat S76, a gargantuan chain-driven hulk propelled by a flame-spitting 28-liter airship engine and nicknamed the “Beast of Turin,” has found that when you can’t afford the most effective, then go for the weirdest. Invites from the Duke will observe.
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Cheetahs are definitely a bizarre and wild footnote of Nineteen Sixties racing Americana. Anaheim, California, Corvette racer Bill Thomas created the tube-framed racing machine with backing from Chevrolet as a road and racing reply to the Ford-powered Shelby Cobra. However, in 1964 the FIA sports activities automotive homologation guidelines had been modified from 100 vehicles to 1000 and General Motors, additionally going through congressional scrutiny over automobile security following the 1964 publishing of Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed, misplaced curiosity and yanked the wire on this system. The Cheetah was left excessive and dry. “They never really had time to develop it,” mentioned Pittaway, “so we’re doing it now. Last year it was trying to kill me, but we’ve made some progress.”
Pittaway spent years cobbling collectively the automotive from the crashed and uncared for stays of chassis No. 1, which he found in a lockup in Arizona a few decade in the past. Sorting out the advanced fuel-injection system on the 440bhp small-block V8 took 18 months alone. “There are more O-rings and fittings than you can imagine,” he mentioned.
This specific Cheetah, the one survivor of two that had alloy bodywork (the remainder had been shod in fibreglass), was principally a prototype used to earn the automotive its FIA certification papers, mentioned Pittaway, then it crashed in testing at Daytona. Entirely new rear bodywork needed to be fabricated, whereas the entrance needed to be rigorously hammered again into form.
The Cheetah is all tyre and muscular bulge, trying much less like a bounding cat than a mollusk in sizzling pants. Its signature form got here from mounting the Chevy 327 almost in the course of the automotive, such that the Muncie four-speed gearbox connects on to the differential by way of a U-joint and with no propshaft. Wedged in behind the wheel, Pittaway sits between the rear tyres, his baking legs subsequent to the engine and actually beneath the exhaust, whereas the 30-gallon petrol tank wraps across the cockpit from the rear. Three separate filler caps on the physique enable a number of crewmen to dump in gasoline directly.
The practical end result, mentioned Pittaway, is a less-than-ideal 57 p.c rear weight bias, which he and his crew chief, loyal good friend and former McLaren fabricator Jon Payne, have struggled to beat. “All the adjustments you do to correct understeer and oversteer seem to be the opposite of what you’d expect,” mentioned Pittaway. “It’s got a front suspension that is copied from a Lotus 23, and a rear suspension off a cement mixer.”
The automotive’s different large handicap is that Chevrolet in 1963 didn’t supply manufacturing disc brakes, so the Cheetah thus has antiquated drums in any respect 4 corners. “We are doing 158 mph through the speed trap on the Lavant Straight, and then there’s the 90-degree right hander at Woodcote,” he mentioned. Besides being heavier and providing a usually longer and softer brake pedal, drum brakes don’t have the cooling functionality of discs. Once all that metallic will get sizzling, it’s exhausting to chill down in racing circumstances.
“I am definitely shading the brakes,” mentioned Pittaway. “I want to find the limit safely, without going over.” Pittaway met the late Bob Bondurant, one of many Cheetah’s authentic growth drivers, years in the past. “He thought it was hysterically funny that we were trying to restore it for racing,” Pittaway recalled. Bondurant’s recommendation: “You need to pass as many cars on the straight as you can, then try not to be re-passed by everyone in the corners.”
The Cheetah was invited to the Revival weekend’s headliner occasion, the Royal Automobile Club Tourist Trophy race on Sunday, a one-hour enduro for closed-cockpit GT vehicles with a compulsory driver change. Often one of many quickest and wooliest races of the weekend, it commemorates the TTs held on the former RAF Spitfire base between 1958 and 1964 and is often an epic battle between light-weight Jaguar E-Types and Shelby Cobras. Having been to Goodwood many occasions, this might be Pittaway’s first go within the large race. “We’ve had ten weeks to develop our car,” he mentioned. “Most of our competitors have had ten years.”
Hoping for a end “somewhere in the top 20,” he fashioned up close to the again of the grid of this 12 months’s working simply as rain clouds loomed. About half-hour into the race, a deluge hit simply as Pittaway, working properly behind the leaders, handed off to his co-driver, 81-year-old former bike and saloon automotive racer Stuart Graham. Graham did a few tentative laps within the pelting rain, which despatched a few Cobras and a spectacular 1965 Bizzarrini 5300GT aquaplaning into the partitions, then retired the Cheetah to battle one other day.
When we glided by the Cheetah’s paddock, Pittaway was nowhere to be discovered, however a clearly disillusioned Payne mentioned he revered the choice. “I guess you don’t get to be 81 in this game without making some smart decisions somewhere.”
