This photo was just posted by Dog427435 on the Vintage shots thread, what isthe history on it. Were is it today? Bob
Cheetah Transporter http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2008/10/16/the-cheetah-transporter-an-unlikely-el-camino/ http://www.hemmings.com/hmn/stories/2009/05/01/hmn_feature22.html Norman Holtkamp had a problem. While first racing midgets on the West Coast, then later becoming involved in sports car racing, he saw firsthand how ineffective, albeit necessary, trailers were for transporting race cars. Trailers swayed at speed; they were unpredictable on slippery surfaces; and backing up with a trailer takes skill and coordination. Holtkamp made a living selling and tuning Volkswagens and Porsches from his shop in Inglewood, California, but it was another Teutonic carmaker that provided him with the inspiration to deal with the trailering problem: Mercedes-Benz, with its blue Rennabteilung transporter, a severely cab-forward hauler that carried Mercedes' grand prix cars around piggyback style (see HMN, March 2009, for more on this truck). Mercedes-Benz built its one-off transporter in 1954; the European press loved it, and photos of the transporter trickled across the Atlantic over the following few years. In about 1958, Holtkamp had designer Dave Deal convert his sketches into an actual design. He then found a wrecked Mercedes 300 S sedan, the same car that donated its chassis to the Mercedes transporter, and stripped the body from the chassis so he could cut 20 inches from the wheelbase and graft a cantilevered frame section forward of the front wheels to hold the cab section. While the Mercedes transporter topped out at 105 MPH, Holtkamp wanted his version to zip up to 112 MPH, so he ditched the Mercedes drivetrain and installed a tuned Corvette small-block V-8, backed by a three-speed manual transmission. And while the Mercedes transporter mounted the engine ahead of the front axle, Holtkamp placed the engine and transmission behind the front wheels. The 300 S swing axle remained at the other end of the driveshaft. A ballast tank and two 24-gallon fuel tanks at the rear helped distribute weight. When it came time to mount the body, Holtkamp managed to convince Chevrolet to sell him the cab section from a 1959 El Camino. He then took the chassis and cab to Los Angeles-based Troutman-Barnes, already well known for building race car bodies, and had their fabricators hammer a nosepiece for the cab out of aluminum, then build the entire body aft of the cab from aluminum. Troutman-Barnes enclosed the entire body, creating 150 cubic feet of cargo space. Atop the rear body section, Troutman-Barnes installed the ramps built of 1/4-inch aluminum. Holtkamp finished the transporter sometime around 1961. He made vague comments about building a few others and offering them for sale at $16,000 each, but those plans never materialized. Instead, he hauled race cars to events in and around Southern California and later stretched the wheelbase of the Cheetah from the original 94 inches to a total of 124 inches to aid in the transporter's on-highway handling. Partway through stretching the wheelbase and after he'd discarded most of the Troutman-Barnes body, Holtkamp sold the Cheetah--with just 3,000 miles logged on it--to Dean Moon, of the eponymous speed shop. Moon sent the Cheetah to Hurst/Airheart's shop to have the stock drum brakes replaced with discs, but shortly after, during the February 1971 San Fernando earthquake, a portion of the Hurst/Airheart building fell over the transporter. The building hardly touched the transporter, but the disc brake conversion was never completed, so the transporter sat on jackstands until after Moon's death in 1987, when it was sold to race car collector Jim Degnan. Degnan updated the chassis, then sold the driveable transporter to Florida oddities collector Geoff Hacker in December 2006. This article originally appeared in the May, 2009 issue of Hemmings Motor News.
Hummm.... Let's take this El Camino cab and move it waaaaayyyyy over >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> here! This is certainly one wierd sumbitch!
I would LOVE to haul my mini-gasser (Opel Kadett) with that thing!!!! No surprise Dean Moon has his hands involved in this unusual vehicle..... he had PLENTY in his lifetime.... one that was too short like so many other great hot rodders who died too soon.
The Jalopy Journal
