That other Cheetah
John Plaisted built a homemade mongrel of a sports car and proceeded to beat most pedigreed cars he raced.
As chief judge of the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance, I always carefully check the applicant lists. This year, I was surprised to see an entry called a 1953 Cheetah. That was too early for a Bill Thomas California Cheetah, but I was pretty sure I knew what car it was. When the Cheetah was a no-show, I was very disappointed.
I resolved to track it down. Armed with a name and a phone number, I called the owner, David Pacqua, in Norwalk, Conn. He, too, was disappointed, as he and his wife had hoped to have the car ready for Greenwich. He’d inadvertently fitted the wrong flywheel and the starter motor wouldn’t engage.
“Do you own John Plaisted’s old race car?” I asked. When he said, “Yes,” the memories flooded back.
An unforgettable Cheetah sighting
In the mid 1950s, as a car-mad junior high school student in Swampscott, Mass. — a small seaside suburb about 13 miles north of Boston — I was very aware of everything interesting on wheels located in a 5-mile radius of my home. I knew this car. Located just across from King’s Beach, on the Lynn-Swampscott line, stood a large garage and filling station that was run by a man named John Plaisted.
Mr. Plaisted was a locally respected mechanic who (from my memory) sold new Saabs and Borgwards, serviced imported cars (we called them “foreign cars”) and he had a tough-looking, homebuilt race car that he’d campaigned at many New England tracks. You couldn’t miss Mr. Plaisted’s car when it was running on the street, and you could hear it coming for blocks.
I recall Mr. Plaisted as a short, stocky fellow with unruly hair, a “can do” attitude and an air of impatience. His scruffy little two-seater, which he’d named the Cheetah, was a reflection of his feisty personality. He’d begun building the Cheetah in 1952. A “Jacob’s coat” of a car, it rode on a re-purposed and massive 1952 Ford chassis that Plaisted had recycled after a wreck (not his). The ladder frame was Zee-ed front and rear with independent coil spring front suspension and Air Lifts inside the front springs. The steering box had started life on a Thunderbird.
The Cheetah looked like a junkyard dog — and that’s not an unkind statement. It was powered by a basically stock 331-cid Cadillac V-8, at first with just a four-barrel carburetor. The big Caddy mill had solid lifters, adjustable rockers and, later on, an early sand-cast Edelbrock intake manifold with four two-barrel carburetors. At times, he also ran a three-carburetor intake. The exhaust pipes ran from the stock GM cast-iron manifolds through about 3 feet of ni-chrome flex pipe, then connected to straight-through mufflers attached along the sides. The gearbox was a three-speed manual from a LaSalle. A Franklin quick-change rear end, located with large radius rods, centered a burly solid rear axle setup, and there was a sturdy, cockpit-wide rollbar. Although it was small, it weighed about 2,200 lb., probably because of its massive chassis.
A recycled MG TD grille, with a screen replacing the vertical slats, and a fabricated sheet metal hood fronted a skimpy body that was painted faded red. It resembled an early MG with twin cowls, cut-down door openings and Brooklands screens. Behind the grille were several finned copper tubes for extra cooling. It was painted a rusty shade of red.
In later iterations, the exhaust had evolved into three-into-one headers and big VHT white collectors. Early on, the steel wheels wore Ford “dog dish” hubcaps. Later, these caps were omitted. The brakes were 12-inch drums, Mercury in front and Cadillac in the rear. An e-brake lever for each rear brake must have made stopping very interesting.
Mr. Plaisted campaigned this Jacob’s coat of a car from 1954 until 1960, racing at Lime Rock, Thompson, Bridgehampton and Watkins Glen. He also ran the hill climbs at Mt. Equinox (1955 first place, fastest time of the day) and Mt. Washington. I think the class was called “Formula Libre.” And he beat almost everything at one time or another: Allards, Jaguar XK-120s, Mercedes-Benz 300SLs, Ferraris and other pricey sports car of the day. Think Max Balchowski and “Ol’ Yaller.” What the Cheetah lacked in sophistication it more than made up in sheer speed and cornering prowess. Reportedly, the Cheetah could run through the quarter-mile traps at 100 mph. Its top speed was about 135 mph.
The Cheetah was the subject of a two-page feature in Hot Rod Magazine in September 1958. Author Alex Walordy called it “A strange Breed of Car.” “Don’t be deceived by that MG look,” Walordy wrote. “Beneath it is poised some mighty potent machinery.”
Over the course of its racing life, the Cheetah finished ahead of some tough competition, like George Weaver at Watkins Glen driving the “Poison Lil Maserati” in 1955 and George Arents in a Ferrari 250, Walt Hansgen in a Jaguar 150S and Fred Windridge in a Corvette at Bridgehampton in 1958.
Besides John Plaisted, the Cheetah was driven by his son, Stutz, a former Air Force pilot, and later by Bob Holbert, the father of Porsche pilot Al Holbert of Warrington, Pa. Stutz Plaisted campaigned the Cheetah until 1963, after which he bought a Lotus 22. After the Cheetah was retired, it was stored at Plaisted’s car dealership for 17 years. When John Plaisted passed away, the Cheetah, along with several Coopers, was sold in 1982 at auction to vintage race car collector and historian Joel Finn.
David Pacqua accompanied Finn when he picked up the Cheetah. Pacqua later told Hemmings Muscle Machines author George Mattar that Finn had said, “...take the Cheetah home to your garage and pay me later.” When Pacqua married his wife DeDe, Finn generously gave them the Cheetah as a wedding present.
Pacqua has kept the Cheetah largely as it is. He’s left the original body and paint alone. He refinished the suspension components, but he’s dulled them to replicate the car’s years of patina. A fuel cell and an approved rollbar were required before he could vintage race the car, and he replaced the original exhaust with a set of headers. Other than that, the Cheetah looks substantially the way it looked when the Plaisteds, father and son, were the nemesis in many racers’ rearview mirrors.
Pacqua told George Mattar that “Vic Edelbrock, Jr., tried to buy the original sand-cast intake manifold a few years ago, but I told him it wasn’t for sale.”
Pacqua has raced the Cheetah at Mt. Washington, and he competed at Daytona Speedway before being black-flagged after six laps for lack of fenders.
I told Pacqua that I had a fast ride with John Plaisted in this car when I was 14 years old — it was the quickest and loudest car I’d ever been in, and a far cry from the MG TC owned by my neighbor, Brice Durkee. “I can concur,” Pacqua says, “the Cheetah is loud and scary. I used to say to folks at the track that this thing tries to kill me at every turn. But honestly, it wasn’t so bad, and it did help hone the edge for other series of race cars for me.”
The Pacquas have retrofitted the Cheetah to look the way it did in the early 1960s, digging out “original bits” to replace the more modern parts that had accumulated over the years. He never met John Plaisted, but he did meet Stutz and his family at Mt. Washington in 2004.
It took ingenuity, imagination, mechanical skill and driving ability to take on fast production sports cars in the 1950s and win a few SCCA races — but John Plaisted did it, basically in a home-built hot rod --- and the surviving Cheetah is living, driving proof.
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