The other day my older brother and I were talking about a toy I had back in the early 70's called the "Cheetah". More specifically, we were talking about the time I wiped the exhaust system out from under a neighbour's Chevy 4X4 truck with my forehead while riding the Cheetah under the truck.
Anyway, about the toy: It was similar to the BigWheel, but with one major difference: It was rear wheel drive. It had a system of pulleys and cables driving the rear wheels - you kind of pushed the pedals back & forth rather than rotating them like on a regular bike (or trike). It had a metal frame and a hard rubber spoked front wheel (similar to a tricycle) with plastic rear wheels (which made for some interesting handling characteristics - more traction in the front than rear = bigtime oversteer :hick:). It also had long chopper-style handlebars and the Cheetah itself was quite longer than a Bigwheel. I loved the hell out of that machine, and it was WAY cooler than any stupid ol' wrong-wheel-drive Bigwheel could ever be.
My world came to an end that fateful day it was stolen out of our garden shed when I was about 4 years old.
I can't seem to find much info on them, though I did dredge up a pic on the internet. Anyone else ever own one?
(http://transam.tylerkaftan.com/fwd_sucks)
looks like a pretty hot ride there
That reminds me of the old Kett Cars from the '80s.
I can remember back in 1991 or so, as an aspiring gear head, I took a friend's Kett Car (without asking) to the top of a very steep hill and let 'er rip.
After making it about 75% of the way down the hill, I just breached mach 2 when I yanked the rear brake and held on for dear life.
That thing must have swapped ends two or three times. The rear tires were totally flat-spotted.
Needless to say, I stashed it back into their garage and made a beeline for home. I never heard anything about it.
I had an old 60s pedal car (RWD hehe) that I played on a lot.
And yeah, I was never a fan of those Big Wheels. You could never accelerate and turn efficiently at the same time.
I had a full bodied pedal car that I would take down my grandparents driveway which was all blacktop and all downhill. The plastic tires became flat-spotted as I would lock the wheels up and loop it. Quite often I would purposely dive into the grass and cut the wheel at the bottom which 9 times out of 10 would result in a roll-over.
I eventually got the bright idea to take gobs of paper and turn the plain ugly pedal car into another car. One that I vividly remember was when I made it a teal colored Z28 camaro. It had paper fenders, a paper hood and front clip that added about a foot to the front of the original plastic body. I then created the correct rear out of paper. I took that thing down the driveway and turned it head first into the side of the house crushing the front end and then spun it around and crumbled the rear end on the chainlink fence. I taped it back together and took it back up the hill for another run. Now that was fun.
My personal favorite though, was my Power Wheels Jeep that I got for Christmas '87 or '88 and I still have that thing.