Bill Thomas

He is remembered for a car that is not a Camaro. But the Cheetah's failure is part of why the dealer-tuner Camaro exists — and the same homologation arithmetic that killed it is what created the Z/28.

Thomas began tuning Corvettes in 1956 and had his own shop by 1960, when GM came to him for performance development work — drag cars, the Chevy II. The Cheetah started as a proof of concept to show GM what the shop could do, and turned into a Cobra-fighter he raced for promotion.

What makes it a Camaro story is who was quietly behind it. Vince Piggins provided covert support for the Cheetah in 1963 — the same man who would create the Z/28 and run the COPO route that got 427s into Camaros. Chevrolet had officially left racing; Piggins kept finding ways for it to race anyway, and the Cheetah was one of them.

Then the rules moved. In 1964 the homologation requirement went from 100 cars to 1,000, a number a small Anaheim shop was never going to reach, and Chevrolet stopped supporting the project. On 9 September 1965 the factory burned. Production was never properly counted: one estimate says as many as 23 cars in varying states of completion, while BTM Race Cars' Bob Auxier puts it at 19 chassis and 33 bodies. Those two figures have never been reconciled.

Here is the part worth sitting with. The same arithmetic that killed the Cheetah is what produced the Z/28. Piggins had backed a car that needed a thousand units it could never build — then designed a Camaro package from the outset around a rule it could actually satisfy. SCCA nominally wanted 1,000 of those too. Chevrolet built 602 and SCCA took it.

After the Cheetah, Thomas collaborated with Nickey Chevrolet on the 427 Camaro conversions, and his shop sponsored first-generation Camaro race cars. Bill Burke reportedly had him build a 1967 427 Camaro that set a Bonneville record — a claim still lacking a primary citation.

No production figure for the Bill Thomas 427 Camaros has been found. The surviving brand site hosts a great deal of photography of the engine builds and almost no history.

Key beats

• Bill Thomas Race Cars, Anaheim, California, founded by 1960
• Built the Cheetah 1963–1966 as an answer to Shelby's Cobra, with covert backing from Vince Piggins
• Homologation rose from 100 cars to 1,000 in 1964; GM support ended
• His factory burned on 9 September 1965
• Then built 427 Camaro conversions with Nickey Chevrolet