I'm gonna +1 this, because I looked it up on wiki, and it says:
"The Bill Thomas Cheetah was a sports car car built from 1963-1966 by Chevrolet performance tuner Bill Thomas as a competitor to Carroll Shelby's Cobra."
and
"A fire in the factory destroyed the original plywood body buck, the factory drag car and some spare parts inventory, thus contributing to the eventual demise of the car."