Motoring Misfits: Cheetah Cars

Listing the world's worst cars has always been a fun and often controversial topic, but I'm growing tired of the same old subjects being repeated ad infinitum and instead I nominate some of my own choices that are so bad their very existence is almost unknown. I'm not going to fall into the usual clichés like the Edsel, Austin Allegro and Alfa Romeo Arna that appear on everyone else's lists, as those cars all had some merit and can be defended by enthusiastic supporters.

To find something truly awful, one has to look beyond the mass-producers to the weird and wonderful world of cottage industry kit car manufacturers. Many of these are extremely obscure, but thanks to a book I have recently purchased, the fascinating Filby Files Vol. 2 - Classic Kit Cars by Chris Rees and Peter Filby, a whole new world of bizarre and rubbish contraptions has been revealed to me and some of them make the Allegro look like a model of perfection.

Why waste your time trying to build this lump of shoddy fibreglass?

The 1980s was a boom time for the kit car industry in the UK. Anybody who had ever made anything out of fibreglass, many just one or two-man bands in a shed, came up with their own bodies to fit a clapped-out Beetle, Mini, Cortina or some other old heap. Some, like the JBA Falcon and Teal Type 35, were very well-engineered and could be built into thoroughly decent cars by anyone with a modicum of skill, but at the other end of the scale were some truly appalling creations, many of which thankfully now only exist in old photos. Formed by Kevin Mason with a factory in Newcastle, later moving to Chester-le-Street, Cheetah Cars started out with a solitary not-very-good Ford GT40 replica and blighted the scene with a series of ugly, badly-made and utterly undesirable products during their mercifully brief existence.

Not even its manufacturer could assemble the Mirach properly!

The Cheetah Mirach made its debut to a distinctly underwhelmed audience at the 1983 National Kit Car Show in Stoneleigh. It was supposed to be a replica of the Lamborghini Miura but ended up bearing little resemblance to that iconic supercar, and instead of a single donor car used an odd mish-mash of parts: Alfasud engine, Cortina hubs, steering and windscreen, and Lotus 7 dampers among others. Quality was said to be utterly abysmal, so bad in fact that the manufacturer was forced to admit that this was "a very difficult car to build professionally" so DIY builders stood no chance. The shoddy show car remained the only one ever made as nobody was foolish enough to buy one.

No expense was spent on the Mirach 2's launch

The Mirach's reception was so terrible that Cheetah almost immediately withdrew it from sale, returning the following year with the Mirach 2, unveiled in what Mr Filby described as one of the most tatty and unappealing displays ever seen at the Stoneleigh show. This was a slight improvement over the original, but that was hardly a challenging achievement. It was still practically unbuildable but at least looked a bit more like the Miura, and unlike its predecessor offered an absurd choice of donor parts: a mid-engined monocoque with Alfasud or Escort power, or a tubular chassis with a Ford V6 or Rover V8 in the front and Jaguar or Granada suspension. A couple of brave souls seem to have taken the plunge and bought a Mirach 2 as three are said to have been made, and amazingly one of the customer cars was eventually completed to a standard much higher than Cheetah's own efforts.

Rebodying a knackered Beta seemed a good idea but not when it looked like this

Undaunted by the dismal failure of the Mirach, Cheetah carried on creating new products. Their next effort was the Shamal, designed around the Lancia Beta. This was a good idea in theory given the large number of rusty Betas cluttering up scrapyards at the time, but suffered from ungainly styling and to quote Filby "the bodywork has more ripples than a well-stocked sweet shop"! Cheetah embraced adaptability to a ridiculous level as the Shamal came in a bewildering range of variants: a full four-seater with a Ford engine in the front and RWD, a 2+2 with mid-mounted Lancia power, and an Alfasud-powered two-seater with either a mid or front engine, the latter driving the front wheels. All that choice did nothing to attract buyers though as only two were made in three years.

Just like a Cobra. From far away. In thick fog. If you can't see very well.

AC Cobra replicas became the 'in thing' in the kit car world during the mid eighties, and Cheetah were quick to jump on that bandwagon. The Viper was one of the least accurate copies ever seen though; it looked vaguely like a Cobra from a distance but had such ridiculous features as external door hinges and an MGB windscreen raised on a crude plinth that completely ruined the illusion. This time mechanical parts were a mixture of Ford and Triumph with options of an Alfa engine and Jaguar back axle, and the quality of the fibreglass was once again down to Cheetah's usual low standards. Nonetheless, the Viper was the most successful Cheetah product with eleven made, most of which were probably never finished, and it did at least go on to inspire other kit car manufacturers to create more authentic Cobra replicas.

The brochure was of better quality than the cars, and even that wasn't very good

There was allegedly one more Cheetah car but it's even more enigmatic than the others as it isn't in the Filby book and I can't find much information or any pictures. The SV1 was supposedly a Lancia or Alfasud-engined roadster introduced in 1985 that remained a one-off and must have promptly disappeared into oblivion. Cheetah Cars inevitably didn't last long and went out of business in 1986 after producing just 19 kits that were all of very poor quality even by the low standards of the era. The unfortunate buyers would doubtless have quickly got frustrated and given up trying to assemble such badly-fitting kits, so it's likely that few if any ever got anywhere near being roadworthy and it would be nothing short of a miracle for any of them to have survived.

Cheetah's best effort was this ill-proportioned and crudely-moulded abomination

The whole point of buying a kit car is for the pleasure and satisfaction of building your own bespoke vehicle, so there was really no reason to invest in a Cheetah that would cause nothing but anger and frustration at the inability to put together its ill-fitting parts, and even if you did ever manage against the odds to get it roadworthy it would still no doubt have been a disappointment. It was firms like Cheetah that gave the kit car industry a bad name, and they are noteworthy only for the impressive achievement of being one of the worst entrants in a field that had so many dismal products. That they have been completely forgotten and all that remains of their output are a few grainy pictures is frankly very well-deserved.