This cheetah was built as a turnkey car in July/August 1964 at Bill Thomas Race Cars in Anaheim California. It was built with a 1964 Corvette 327 365 HP engine, 4 speed wide ratio Muncie trans, 3.36 rear axle, 4 wheel drum brakes, American racing wheels with Firestone Indy sport tires. It was painted Riverside Red with Black Interior. Hood stripes White and Blue. This cat was used by Bill for promo events, Sears Allstate Promo car and Hollywood BLVD Drag Racing on the week ends. This Cheetah was just over a year old when it was caught up in the Famous fire at Bills Shop in the fall of 65. The body windows tires and wheels were damaged by the fire. There were a few other Rare cats parked in the shop that famous night. Bills Drag car burnt all the way down to a twisted frame on the back of a rollback tow truck. A few others had light damage. the wooden bucks built to produce the Aluminum 90" wheel base Cheetah bodies were lost. After the clean up Bill Had his crew re-body this cat. they found some Ansen true 3 bar KO'S installed them with sears tires, ordered complete window set Including side windows but the windows were never installed. the cat was put in a corner of the shop until Dec 66 when an Ohio resident Phoned Bill wanting to buy a Cheetah, Bill sent him a picture of this car setting out back his shop, body still in white primer. They struck a deal and the car was shipped to Ohio where it has spent most of the last 40 years in a barn. I had been in Contact with its current owner since 1993 trying to buy it. well He liked his cat more than I did so we never did make a deal for me to buy it from him. So one day I called him out of the blue and just wanted to talk Cheetahs he explained his barn has to be taken down and the car needed a place to go. We then talked about what our company BTM was up to. I Told him about Bill Thomas signing on to let us Build the new Bill Thomas Continuation Cheetahs here in Arizona,  I also explained we were building a full race Cheetah and sent him a package on our Company BTM. we then talked over the next few weeks and we decided the best thing to do was to restore it back to its 1964 new condition. So yes it is here under restoration with plans of completion sometime in mid summer 2008. More pictures to follow.