Would you believe Brian Sampson blasting his Cheetah Mk5 Chev through Shell corner at Sandown in 1973? Nup, me neither…
Clearly he was playing with downdraught Webers instead of the 40DCOE’s usually fitted to his works-Motor Improvements 1.3-litre Toyota Corolla based F3 engine, an experiment that didn’t cause him to change induction direction: the car is a Cheetah Mk5 Toyota.
Great little motors, one was fitted to an ASP 340 Clubman car I owned. Lordy knows how many 1.3-litre ANF3 and Clubman races those engines won in mid-1970s in the hands of works-pilots Brian Shead, Brian Sampson and Peter Jones plus a swag of customers of whom Peter Macrow, Paul King and Dean Hosking readily spring to mind. There were plenty more.
I got to know Brian later in his life via my friend and Auto Action publisher/owner Bruce Williams. I did a piece about the Cheetah Mk6 for Auto Action in July 2021 and spent the better part of a day talking to Brian and Brendan Jones while Sambo and Williams relentlessly and hilariously hung-shit on one another for the duration. They had known and worked together for the better part of 40 years.
We did a return bout not too long before Brian died (17 November 2023), I’ve never completed the planned two articles, but we taped the long three-way chat and one day will remove the too-naughty bits and pop it up on the A-A website. Such a talented driver, engineer and businessman, not forgetting the top-bloke factor.
Brian buckles up, probably, but not definitely in the works-Toyota Celica sports-sedan which is shown below at Warwick Farm, perhaps in early 1973.
Etcetera…
After the initial post, racer, Brendan Jones, Sampson’s stepson sent me some more shots of Brian racing with the downdraught setup. The two shots above are at Adelaide International?, the two below at Calder. That’s David Crabtree’s #70 self modified Cheetah MK 4 below, a car he still owns. Dates of the meetings would be a bonus too.
Credits…
Brian Sampson Archive via Brendan Jones, Auto Action Archive-Greg Stanfield by courtesy of Bruce Williams, Mark Bishop
Tailpieces…
Of course, Cheetah aficionados know that Brian Shead built an F5000 car – of sorts – the Cheetah Mk4 Oldsmobile 3.5-litre V8. Originally to Don Biggar’s order, it’s raced above by Ian Judd at Mount Leura, Camperdown in the mid-1970s. Judd won the Australian Hillclimb Championship with it at Morwell in 1977.
See here for a piece I wrote in the current issue of Australian Auto Action about hillclimbing in the 1970s including this car, it’s on page 40: https://issuu.com/me8674/docs/aa1901_digital_issue
Of course there was a time when motor-noters speculated about Brian Shead building an F5000 Cheetah, in the mid-1970s.
Auto Action’s graphic designer has used a shot of Sambo aboard a Mk5 at Calder as the basis of his rendering of a potential ‘Cheetah Chev’ in issue #126, December 1975.
Finito…
primotipo... 