1964 Cro-Sal Cheetah

1964 Cro-Sal Cheetah by Mark Gussin

This is the infamously unsuccessfull car, originally built with a roof on, by Bill Thomas. This little sportscar had a 470 brake horsepower V8 engine! To quote Road & Track's fine article in October 1991 it was " too short, too wide, too cramped, too hot, too fast"!

My friend Russ gave me an old Cox Cheetah slot car bodyshell that was very much worse for ware. The rear apron had a bad crack, one of the front wings did too. The front under-valance was missing and also most of the chrome and a side pipes were missing. However typically I said "I could do something with that"!

Then Scott Smith then got me thinking. He was running an event up there in Seattle for MRRC chassis'd slot cars and the Cheetah bodyshell fitted the MRRC AC Cobra, front engined chassis perfectly. So away I went.

I'd always fancied doing the Cro-Sal Cheetah which is a de-roofed, widened wheel-arched normal Cheetah. The full size Cheetah was singularly unsuccessful as a racing car and apparently because the cockpit got so hot someone had the bright idea to remove the roof! Even after these mods though it was still unsuccessful. My dream is to own and drive one of the real machines up the hill at Goodwood Festival of Speed!

Back to the slot car. I cut the roof off the Cox bodyshell, fabricated wheel arch extensions, filled the front body holes, made all the repairs, added a driver base, changed and filled the rear end and eventually got the body to look halfway decent. The MRRC chassis had its sides cut off and the two were married together. I installed mounting posts and the whole thing started to look good. Decals were made using my ever-faithful Alps printer, and so the bodyshell was nearly there. A minor problem with the complete non-availability of the side exhausts and the engine carbs was resolved when my friend Mike Sells came to the rescue. Roll bar was soldered brass and then painted. The windshield was cut down as per the real car and with a bit of detailing this little car looked great.

I completed construction of the chassis. Put in a not mega powerful but "warm" motor and then the problems started. Number one problem was the spring and drive shaft arrangement that front-engined slot cars have to have. It was all over the place and very inaccurate as far as tolerances (!) were concerned. Once that was reasonable came the track test. Well, all I can say is the designer who reckoned the guide arrangement was OK to slop up and down and wobble from side to side must have invented the chocolate teapot or the solar powered torch in a previous life. It was useless. Big problem.

I had shown a very few people what this little car looked like and most asked if I would be entering it in the forthcoming Marconi 2001 race. Oh no, no, no ,no I replied. Then I changed my mind! The chassis didn't work anyway so lets start again!

To the rescue again came Barry Pitcher's Tasman Devil brass chassis. It had to be cut down to fit inside the Cox bodyshell. A Slot.it motor was soldered in. Slot.it rear axle and gears. New bodyshell mounting posts were fitted and off we went. I'd put George Lowe's Indygrip silicone cut to the right width on the back and it went really well. So I thought I was nearly there until I lunched the motor while testing!

This time the motor came out and was replaced by a Cheetah (should have done that in the first place!!!), the gearing was different too so now this little baby flies. After all of the trials and tribulations I don't expect it to perform against the very serious, latter day, wider wheeled and bodied opposition but it was great fun to do in spite of all of the set backs; and it looks great!