Replicarz: 1964 Cheetah Team Clarence Dixon Cadillac No. 33

Bill Thomas’s Masterpiece Could Have Been Chevy’s Cobra killer.

- Bill Bennett

Through the late 1950s, Bill Thomas ran the dyno shop at C. S. Mead Chevrolet in Pasadena, building and tuning Chevy engines for many of Southern California’s amateur and professional racers. In 1960, Thomas relinquished the dynamometer shop to none other than “Dyno” Don Nicholson (who went on to fame for racing and engine building, but that’s a story for another time). Thomas opened his own shop near his home in Anaheim, a stone’s throw fro om Disneyland. Bill Thomas Race Cars (BTRC) specialized in building engines and race cars, and doing special projects for the Chevrolet Division of General Motors. The project that he is best known for was in response to one that had come out of another race shop just a few miles away: Carroll Shelby’s Cobra. When the new ’63 Corvette couldn’t outrun the Cobra on the street or on the track, Chevrolet encouraged Thomas to build a Chevypowered car that could. As part of the deal, Chevy gave Thomas and BTRC’s master fabricator, Don Edmunds, full access to the GM parts bin.