1967 Cheetah Camaro

**ssl78** · #1 09-23-2006, 07:08 PM

I know the 1967 Camaro originally was to be called a Cheetah but was changed to Camaro before being produced. My question is was there ever a 1967 Cheetah released I was talking to someone who claims 5 were sold to the public and he owns one of them. Is this possible some made it to the public as Cheetahs

**427TJ** · #2 09-23-2006, 07:18 PM

I thought it was going to be called the Panther?

67L78conv · #3 09-23-2006, 08:21 PM

Artists concept of the "Panther" soon to be the Camaro from Mechanix Illustrated June 1966.

70CitrusZ · #4 09-23-2006, 08:36 PM

I know a part number was issued for the "Panther" emblems, and an initial run of the emblems were made when at the final moment the emblems were redesigned to say Camaro.
The concept cars had "panther" emblems on them to start with.
Maybe some emblems got out instead of destroyed, or maybe a pre production car exists. I know of at least one pre-production gen 2 Camaro that still exists..vin 500001. This car exibits some minor diferences from production.

**ssl78** · #5 09-23-2006, 08:47 PM

The car I am talking about is called a Cheetah its supposed to be a very early almost proto type 67 Z28 called a Cheetah. The part which is confusing is he said it at one time had a 3x2 setup never thought they put that on a Z28

bertfam · #6 09-23-2006, 09:01 PM

John,

I think you're friend is getting them confused. HERE'S A GOOD LINK regarding the Cheetah. Like Bill stated above, the Camaro started out as the Panther.

Ed

**ssl78** · #7 09-23-2006, 09:19 PM

No hes not confused its a 67 Camaro. Here is something I found on it. Some people believed that the Z in Z-28 stood for Zora, as in Zora Arkus-Duntov, the Corvette engineer. Not so. Piggins had put a name on the original 283 prototype before he presented it at the October show-and-tell. The name Piggins had chosen was Cheetah. But Vince took that handmade decal off the car at the last moment, muttering, "Well, a name is a name is a name," and the coupe Estes drove carried no designation at all.

"There wasn't any suggestion of what we were going to call this car," notes Piggins. "When it came down to having to decide, somebody just said, `Hey, it's option RPO Z-28; let's call it Z-28!' So the name just grew from there. The graphics people did things with the Z, and that's how the designation stuck. The car got its name from the actual option.
I think he is referring to have this car he said it was in some magazine in 1966.

**427TJ** · #8 09-23-2006, 09:56 PM

This is from Michael Lamm's book:

67L78conv · #9 09-23-2006, 10:50 PM

That makes much more sense than the Camaro line being named Cheetah. There was a scheduled RPO for a tri power engine but it was for a 396 that was cut before it was produced. I believe that the date it was removed was 10/66 but haven't been able to find the docs I have on it yet. I haven't come across one for a small block engine as of yet in my research.

**John Brown** · #10 09-24-2006, 12:11 AM

There was also a small block GM engineering 3x2 set up that was being tested for trans-am use. It was dropped in favor of the 2x4's and the crossram. The small block 3x2's used 3 inline Holley carbs and had the same spacing as the Corvette big blocks. It could take the same big block air cleaner. There are several pictures of the Winters cast 3x2 manifold in one of the Smokey Yunick performance books.