The Lamborghini Cheetah was a one-off prototype developed by Lamborghini in 1977, they were hoping for a US Military contract however their prototype was destroyed by the Americans during testing. It was powered by a Chrysler V8 mounted in the rear of the chassis, this led to undesirable off-road handling and so a new 4×4 was developed with a front mounted AMC V8. This new Lamborghini became known as the LM002 and was very popular with Middle Eastern oil sheiks in the 1980s, often fitted with bulletproof glass and blast proof floors.
Interestingly the US Military found Uday Hussein’s LM002 in Baghdad in 2004, they decided to rig it with explosives and blow it to smithereens to simulate the effects of a car bomb, thus bringing the total score of the USA vs Lamborghini to a convincing 2:0 victory.
Ben Branch has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, the official Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
The series of Western Clipper Motorhomes were designed by the prolific and influential industrial designer Brooks Stevens, before the United States entered WW2 in the late 1930s and very early 1940s. A number of unique…
The Volvo L3314 “Laplander” was developed in the late 1950s to fulfil a Jeep-like role for the Swedish military, by this time the Unimog was already in production and it’s possible the Volvo took a…
The story of the Toyota Land Cruiser J Series (FJ40 / BJ40 etc) starts in the Philippines during the Second World War, the Japanese had invaded the nation, along which much of the rest of…
The Guiberson 1020 series is a radial diesel engine design that was used in both aircraft and tanks in the 1940s, it was a development of the Guiberson A-918 and A-980 engines from the 1930s,…
This is the Rallye Edition of the International Harvester Scout II Pickup, with its distinctive red and white paintwork including the “rallye” logo emblazoned on each front fender. The Scout’s popularity has been skyrocketing in…
The Rolls-Royce V12 Meteor tank engine was a direct derivative of the legendary Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 – an engine used in aircraft like the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters, the Lancaster bomber, and in Packard-built form…
