Cheater (pronounced chee-ter)
(1) A
person who cheats.
(2) A device or component used to evade detection of non-compliance with rules or regulations (such as the (Dieselgate) mechanical and electronic devices used by Volkswagen and others to cheat emissions testing programmes). As a mechanical device a cheater is thus "a modifier" and the would is also often used as one.
(3) Slang
for eyeglasses or spectacles (archaic).
(4) In
mechanical repair, an improvised breaker bar made from a length of pipe and a
wrench (spanner), usually used to free screws, bolts etc proving difficult to
remove with a ratchet or wrench alone; any device created ad-hoc to perform a
task not using the approved or designated tools.
1300-1350: From the Middle English cheater from cheat, from cheten, an aphetic variant of acheten & escheten, from the Old French eschetour, escheteur & escheoiter, from the noun; it displaced native Old English beswican. The -er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, probably borrowed from the Latin -ārius. The adoption was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr. The suffix was added to a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb, thereby forming the agent noun. The noun cheatery is now rare, existing only in old texts. Escheat refers to the right of a government to take ownership of estate assets or unclaimed property, most often when an individual dies without making a will and with no heirs. In common law, the theoretical basis of escheat was that (1) all property has a recognized owner and (2) if no claimants to ownership exists or can be identified, ownership reverts to the King (in modern terms the state). However, in some circumstances escheat rights can also be granted when assets are held to be bona vacantia (unclaimed or lost property). The original sense was of the "royal officer in charge of the king's escheats," and was a shortened form of escheater, agent noun from escheat. The meaning “someone dishonest; a dishonest player at a game” emerged in the 1530s as the Middle English chetour, a variant of eschetour following the example of escheat + -er which evolved in English in the modern form cheater (cheat + -er).
Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turn'd, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorn'd. William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697).
Cheater cars are a frequent sight on several social media platforms, posted presumably by impressed spectators rather than victims or perpetrators. Techniques and artistry vary but there does seem to be a trend whereby the more expensive the car, the larger and more lurid will be the lettering. Red, pink and fuchsia appear the colours of choice except where the automotive canvas is red; those artists adorn mostly in black or white.
Hell also hath no fury like a woman cheated upon.
For some reason, the (anyway incorrectly quoted) phrase “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” is often attributed to William Shakespeare (1564–1616), possibly because it’s plausibly in his voice or maybe because for most the only time the Middle English “hath” is seen is in some Shakespearian quote so the association sticks. The real author however was actually Restoration playwright William Congreve (1670–1729) who coined the phrase for his 1697 play The Mourning Bride, the protagonist of which, although becoming a bit unhinged by the cruel path of doomed love, doesn’t resort to leporidaecide (bunny boiling). Congreve’s line, “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned” was good but actually was a more poetic rendition of a similar but less elegantly expressed version another playwright had used a year earlier. The Mourning Bride is also the source of another fragment for which the bard is often given undeserved credit: “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast” although that’s often bowdlerized as “Music has charms to soothe a savage beast”.
Politicians
are notorious liars and cheaters, some even cheerfully admitting it (usually
when safely in their well-provided for retirement) but in the privacy of their
diaries, they’ll often happily (and usually waspishly) admit it of others. Although he has a deserved reputation for
telling not only lies but big lies, no
one has ever disputed Joseph Goebbels’ (1897–1945; Reich Minister of Propaganda 1933 to 1945) assessment
of a fellow cabinet member, foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946;
Minister of Foreign Affairs 1938-1945) of whom he said “He bought his name,
married his money and cheated his way into power”.
Volkswagen certainly gave cheating a bad name and in May 2022 the company announced the latest out-of-court settlement would be Stg£ 193 million (US$242 million) to UK regulators, following the Aus$125 million (US$87 million) imposed by the Federal Court of Australia. To date, Dieselgate has cost the company some US$34 billion and some criminal cases remain afoot.
Smokey Yunick’s 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle #13 which some alleged was a 7:8 or 15:16 rendition, here aligned against a grid with a stock body.
In simpler, happier times, cheating was sometimes just part of the process and was something of a game between poacher and gamekeeper. In the 1960s, NASCAR racing in the US was a battle between scrutineers amending their rule-book as cheating was detected and teams scanning the same regulations looking for loopholes and anomalies. The past master at this cheating was Henry "Smokey" Yunick (1923–2001), a World War II (1939-1975) bomber pilot whose ever-fertile imagination seemed never to lack some imaginative idea that secured some advantage while remaining compliant with the letter of the law (at least according to his interpretation). His cheats were legion but probably the most celebrated (and there would have been judges who would have agreed this one was legitimate) concerned his interpretation of the term “fuel tank capacity”. NASCAR specified the maximum quantity of fuel which could be put in a tank but said nothing about the steel fuel line running from tank to engine so Mr Yunick replaced the modest ½ inch (12.5 mm) tube with one 11 feet (3.6 m) long and two inches (50 mm) wide, holding a reputed 5 (US) gallons (19 litres) of gas (petrol). That was his high-tech approach. Earlier he’d put an inflated basketball into an oversized fuel tank before the car was inspected by scrutineers and when they filled the tank, it would appear to conform to regulations; these days it’d be called “inflategate”. After passing inspection, Mr Ynuick would deflate the ball, pull it out and top-up his oversized tank for the race. Pointing out there was nothing in the rules about basketballs didn’t help him but did lead to the rule about a maximum “fuel tank capacity”, hence the later 11 foot-long fuel line.
Mr Yunick’s 1966 Chevrolet Chevelles were different from the stock models but by the mid 1960s, all NASCAR’s stock cars were. The difference was certainly perceptible to the naked eye and an urban legend arose that it was a 7:8 (some said 15:16) scale version. The body’s external dimensions were however those of a stock Chevelle although the body was moved back three inches for better weight distribution, the floor was raised and the underside was smoothed out to improve the aerodynamics. For the same reason the bumpers were fitted flush with the fenders. The first car passed inspection (after making the modifications decreed by NASCAR) and took pole position at the 1967 Daytona 500. He built another imaginative Chevelle for the 1968 race but it never made it past inspection. In 1990, Smokey Yunick was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, a recognition as richly deserved as it was overdue.
A true homophone of cheater, cheetah (the plural cheetahs) is wholly unrelated. Cheetahs are large cats (Acinonyx jubatus) of south-western Asia and Africa, resembling a leopard but noted for certain dog-like characteristics which is why they’re sometimes been trained for hunting game (deer, antelope etc) and they have even occasionally been fully domesticated as pets. Dating from the early eighteenth century, cheetah was from the Hindi चीता (cītā (leopard, panther), from the Sanskrit citraka (leopard) & citrakāya (tiger) the construct being चित्र (citra) (multicoloured; speckled) + काय (kāya) (body, thus “beast with a spotted body”. The Sanskrit citra was akin to the Old High German haitar (bright), the German heiter and the Old Norse heiðr (bright) and ultimately was from the primitive Indo-European kit-ro-, from the root skai- (to shine, gleam, be bright). Kāya ultimately was from the primitive Indo-European kwei- (to build, make). The now archaic alternative spellings were cheetah & cheetah and historically, the creatures were known also as the guepard, hunting cat or hunting leopard. Understandably, given their size and predatory nature, it’s not uncommon for cheetahs to be referred to as “big cats” but in zoological taxonomy, felinologists restrict the “big cat” classification to the genus Panthera (lions, tigers, leopards, snow leopards & jaguars) and one defining feature of the Panthera cats is their ability to roar, made possible by a specific structure in their larynx. Lacking the anatomical feature, cheetahs can purr, chirp & hiss but not roar.
A female cheetah at speed.
According to Dr Anne Marie Helmenstine, computer modelling suggests a cheetah should be able (briefly) to attain a speed of 75 mph (120 km/h) although its hunting technique is to maintain an average speed of 40 mph (65 km/h), sprinting to the maximum only when making a kill. If required, it can go from 0-60 mph in 3 seconds (in three strides) which in the class of the quickest Lamborghinis, Ferraris and such but it’s a sprinter with little endurance, able to sustain its speed for little more than a quarter-mile (400 m). Still, that’s almost three times as quick as the best recorded human, the men’s world record for the 100 m sprint standing a 9.58 seconds, compared with an eleven year cheetah (in captivity) which was clocked at 5.95 and her top speed of 61 mph (98 km/h) remains the highest verified. That makes the cheetah the fastest land animal on Earth; only some birds can go faster.
A contemporary of the Shelby American AC Cobra (1962-1967) and very much in the same vein, the Cheetah (1963-1966) was designed and constructed by California-based race car builder Bill Thomas (1921-2009). As part of his work as an engineering consultant, Mr Thomas undertook projects for General Motors (GM), his focus on the somewhat clandestine motorsport activities of its Chevrolet division, and he parlayed this influence into securing corporate support for the concept which became the Cheetah. The support was practical in that it yielded most of the mechanical components needed for a prototype including a Chevrolet Corvette 327 cubic inch (5.3 litre) V8 engine, Muncie four-speed gearbox, independent rear suspension and a miscellany of stuff from the GM parts bin. It was obviously the pre-CAD (computer-aided-design) era but Mr Thomas didn’t trouble himself with drawing boards or blueprints, instead laying out the drive-train components on the floor of his workshop in seemed to his practiced eye an ideal arrangement and, with white chalk, he then sketched on the concrete the outline of the chassis frame members. At that point, a draftsman (with tape measure) was brought in and blueprints were rendered; remarkably, Mr Thomas with great success for decades used this novel design technique. Once the chassis dimensions were finalized, a body was designed and it’s important to note the project was initially envisaged only as a “concept car”, built for the purpose of impressing GM and thus securing further contracts. It was conceived as something to be admired rather than used for any serious purpose and it was only as construction continued Mr Thomas sort of “fell in love” with his creation and decided to use it also in competition, something to which its low weight and prodigious power should have made it well-suited. However, the compromises in chassis design which mattered not at all for a concept car meant some structural rigidity had been sacrificed and that was a quality essential in race cars; later rectification work would be required. The first two Cheetahs were fabricated in aluminium (later models used GRP (glass reinforced plastic, better known as fibreglass) and one was sent to the Chevrolet Engineering Center for testing and evaluation.
The layout was not so much radical as extreme, the conventional F/R (front engine-rear drive) approach taken to a kind of logical conclusion with the engine located so far back the driver’s legs were alongside the block. In the same way the “mid-engine” configuration was being defined as “engine behind the driver and in front of the rear axle line”, the Cheetah’s variation was “engine in front of driver and behind the front axle line”, now familiar on race cars and in a number of exotics but novel in the early 1960s. As well as offering most of the weight-distribution and handling advantages offered by a mid-engine, the Cheetah’s layout avoided the complication of a transaxle but the drawbacks included inefficiencies in packaging (ie a cramped cockpit) and extraordinary heat-soak, the latter a familiar issue in an ears when small, low volume coupés were fitted with large displacement US V8 engines, the elegant AC 428 “Fura” (1965-1973) an exemplar of the phenomenon. When the Cheetah was tested prior to being used on the track, it was found to be prone to over-heating, largely because the body had been designed to look decorative and no vents had been installed to extract hot air from under the long hood (bonnet). That was addressed by the use of a larger radiator and the addition of various vents & ducts, along with a full-length belly pan, meaning subsequent versions lacked the visual purity of the original, the effect not dissimilar to the way the addition of this and that to provide for heat management meant the production versions of the Lamborghini Countach (1974-1978) lacked the sleek starkness of the original prototype, first shown at the 1971 Geneva Motor Show. Still, compared with how subsequent versions of the Countach (1978-1990) would be adorned, the comparative elegance of the early run remains compelling.
The Cheetah’s dubious structural rigidity was a result of the original chassis being merely a quickly-assembled platform on which the striking body could be mounted to be admired but it was marginal for use even as a road car, let alone one subjected to the stresses of competition and even before testing it was anticipated substantial changes would have to be made. Because so little triangulation had been incorporated in the original design, the chassis was susceptible to the loads imposed by the lateral forces created when negotiating high-speed curves, meaning the suspension geometry changed, challenging even skilled drivers accustomed to the rigid frames which guaranteed at least predictable behavior. Additionally, for the testing, the Cheetah was provided with more power which exacerbated the alarming tendencies which included the rear suspension’s trailing arms bending, slighting altering (sometimes while at high speed) the location of the wheels. Adding gusseting and triangulation to the frame and redesigning the trailing arms ameliorated the worst of the characteristics but some things were inherent in the design and subsequently, some owners of Cheetahs, seduced by its many virtues, undertook was essentially a re-engineering of the underpinnings and the many replicas and "continuation" editions significantly differ from the originals. Still, whatever the quirks, the Cheetah was powerful, light and clearly aerodynamic for in a straight line few could match its pace; the name was chosen for a reason.
Unfortunately, the early 1960s were the end of an era in sports car racing because in addition to the regulatory body changing the rules for the class for which the Cheetah was intended so that 1,000 rather than 100 would be required for homologation, in the top flight, the days of the classic front-engined cars was nearly done and the future lay with the rear-mid configuration. Given all that, Chevrolet withdrew its support although small-scale production continued and some two-dozen were constructed before the last was built in 1965. The survivors are now high-priced collectables and there have been dozens of replicas although in the twenty-first century, this cottage industry was stalled by a dispute over ownership to the intellectual property associated with the design. Predictably, although the Cheetah wasn’t obviously a car in need of more power, some owners of the replicas have concluded exactly that and fitted a variety of engines including big-block V8s and others with turbochargers or superchargers attached. Fundamentally, what this approach meant was the “handle with care” injunction which applied to the original remained; just more so.
1929 Mercedes-Benz SSK (left) and 1964 Cheetah (right)
The distinctive lines of the Cheetah, its driver sitting over the rear wheels behind a long nose, recalled the pre-war roadsters which provided the model for most of the era’s grand prix cars, the motif lasting into 1960 when (in unusual circumstances in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza), a Ferrari secured one last win for the front-engined anachronisms. The Mercedes-Benz SSKs (W06, 1928-1932) & SSKLs (WS06RS, 1929-1931) were classic examples and among the last of the road cars able to win top-flight grand prix events. The red example (above left) is a 1929 model SSK (one of 33 built) and although the hue is untypical of the breed, in fashion and on the highways, the interwar years were more colourful that the impression left by the volume of monochrome and sepia images which form so much of the photographic record. Interestingly, although Mercedes-Benz race cars are much associated with white (the racing color originally allocated to Germany) and silver (adopted by the factory racing team in the 1930s although in not quite the circumstances once claimed) there was a precedent for the use of red because that was the paint applied to the Mercedes Tipo Indy 2.0 used to win the 1924 Targa Florio (setting a race-record time which would stand for a decade), chosen because of the habit of the Sicilian crowds to pelt with rocks any car not painted in Italian Racing Red. Not since 1920 had a non-Italian car won so it was a wise precaution.
Such is the appeal to stylists of the “long nose” that over the years many have ignored the packaging inefficiencies its use imposes. It was one of the most commented-upon aspects of the Jaguar E-type (1961-1974) and probably it’s rare for an analysis of the shape to have been written without the word “phallic” appearing at least once. Even when the effect is not so exaggerated it can be effective, the third generation Pontiac Grand Prix (1969-1972) the last of the memorable designs to emerge from the golden years of GM’s PMD (Pontiac Motor Division) during the 1960s. Intended to be evocative of the aspect ratios of machines such as the big Duesenbergs of pre-war years, PMD even purloined the “J” & “SJ” designations although with its straight-8 engines a Duesenberg really did need a long nose; under the hood of the exclusively V8-powered Grand Prix, there was much empty space.
Nor was it just the manufacturers who have been fond of the style. In Canada, somebody with the requisite skills decided the “Cheetah look” was what a 1973 Volkswagen Super Beetle really needed and while it’s obvious the body extensively has been modified, the distorted dimensions are deceptive because the (presumably unique) project sits on an unmodified chassis, the wheelbase unchanged. Unfortunately or not, the opportunity was not taken to install up front a straight-8 or V16, the car still running the modest, rear-mounted, 1.6 litre (97 cubic inch) flat-4 fitted by the factory. As well as the curved windscreen, the 1303 featured the 1302’s improved front suspension (which one tester claimed made it faster point-to-point than a 1963 Porsche 356), the design of which allowed the capacity of the frunk to be increased and this one will be more capacious still; given it’s now a two seater, luggage capacity should be adequate although the front bucket seats have been replaced with a full-width bench so three adults could be accommodated, BMIs (body mass index) and a willingness to rub shoulders permitting. Because it’s on the same wheelbase, any increase in weight may be minimal and the handling (anyway improved by the revised suspension) presumably will be affected (for better or worse) only by the change in weight distribution. That said, given the thing is now more tail-heavy, the Beetle's inherent tendency to oversteer (somewhat tamed by 1973) might be more apparent but with the power available, even if it behaves something like an early Porsche 930, should a situation drama occur, probably it'll be at a lower speed.
1980 Cadillac Eldorado “Valentino” by the unimaginatively named Conversions Incorporated, a Michigan-based customizing house (left) and 1981 Cadillac Eldorado "Regal Coach" by Florida's International Coach Works Company, a selling point the Rolls-Royceish “flying lady” hood ornament, said to make it a “real head turner” (right).
In the sometimes weird world that was the world of modified PLCs (personal luxury coupe) in the US of the 1970s and 1980s, the “long nose” style didn't exist in isolation. It was one of a number of design elements which were part of the “neo-classical” movement which included also side-exit, flexible exhaust pipes (referencing the often supercharged pre-war machines (a la the Mercedes-Benz SSK but by the 1970s almost always fake), upright chrome-plated grills (Rolls-Royce the preferred inspiration), T-roof assemblies (a modern take on the old sedanca de ville coach-work, fake wire wheels and external spare tyres, the rear one in a "Continental kit" (a look which to this day refuses to die), the fender-mounted pair taking advantage of the eighteen-odd inches (460 mm) spliced between A-pillar and front wheel. The spares used the space where sometimes sat the external exhaust pipes so it was a choice which had to be made although some builders just left the expanse of sheet metal, emphasizing the elongation.
