Cleetus might be a love or hate kind of personality, but you have to remember one thing: it’s a character. Don’t act all surprised. But a character is what is needed sometimes…and for every bit of falsehood there is truth. Cleetus is, in real life and in character, a gearhead to the core, addicted to speed and mechanical violence. We dig that about him. And we’ve been following his work with the car he calls Ruby and we call the Auction Mistake Corvette closely, because it’s been a pretty interesting and surprisingly down-to-earth build…for the most part.

To recap: Cleetus bought the car sight-unseen and found a truck-engined C6 Corvette when he picked it up. The car had lived several lives over by the time he got it, and in the name of putting some sincere power down, an out-of-the-hood turbo kit was slapped onto the 5.3L and the car was sent down the track, hinting at the potential of ten-second runs, right up until the engine packed it in and the transmission made some downright awful noises. A new junkyard engine was sourced and built up, and in the name of bulletproofing the running gear (and to hopefully avoid a transmission locking up at the top end of the track again), a built-to-kill Powerglide was installed. So…engine is in, transmission is no longer a concern…it’s time to hit the track and see if there’s any more weak links in the Corvette’s armor!