Even Jered Muehlhausen, who owns the notorious 2002 Pontiac Trans Am WS6 Convertible lovingly known as “Sketchy Vert,” has had a hard time describing the thrill of putting the pedal to the floor on the 1,000-horsepower F-Body. “The car comes by the whole ‘sketchy’ thing pretty honestly,” Muehlhausen says with a laugh. “I think it’s just been that I’ve done a lot of the build backwards. I’ve always been focused on just making more and more power, and I never really put that much thought into suspension or chassis components that might make the car work a little better.”
The pewter WS6 started off as a seemingly unattainable dream car for the Lincoln, Nebraska-native.
“The first time I saw the car was on a television commercial when i was in high school, and i just knew i had to have one,” he says. “It took me a little bit, but i finally saved up enough money after I got married and found one in 2005. It was a one-owner, low-miles car and I just drove it and took it to car shows with my wife and daughter for several years while I saved up money.”
The project started as many do: wheels and tires.
“I wanted it to lope at idle, so I put a cam in it and drove it for a while. Once I was able to pour a little money into the car, I bought a D1SC blower from ProCharger and that’s when it really started to get crazy.”
Routinely raced on the street and track at events like Street Car Takeover, the car has come a long way from those early days, now featuring a Thompson Motorsports-built LSX 378ci engine fed by a monster 94-mm F1A ProCharger, along with a 200-horsepower plate system from Nitrous Express, all controlled by a MS3 Pro EFI System. The car also features a cryo-treated T-56 Transzilla with a Monster Clutch Co. LT1-R-twin-disc unit, QA1 double-adjustables and Wolfe Racecraft roll cage. The Sketchy Vert is one hell of a street car that even his wife, Sarah, likes to take out on the occasional cruise.
On a recent trip down to Houston, Texas, for Street Car Takeover, Jered and his Sketchy Vert managed to bring home not one, but two wins at Lonestar Motorsports Park.
“Actually, I came down to Houston for a little street action because of their awesome highways. The car performed very well considering I over powered the clutch the night before on the street during a few highway pulls using my spray and I ended up glazing the clutch. I was kind of bummed and wasn’t even going to race at the track the next day,” says Muehlhausen. “I decided to say ‘screw it’ and signed up for the roll race event to see how far I could get off spray and ‘granny shifting’ third gear to drop the boost just enough for my clutch to hold and stand back on it. First round of roll racing was against a turbocharged Fox Body. We took off down the track and were neck and neck, I thought I had him and he thought he had me. For some reason, the clocks didn’t work, and we had to rerun. The second race, he had me out of the hole but I came around him at the very end. The final race in the roll race class was against a 5th generation Camaro and I ended up pulling ahead and taking the win – I was so excited that I raised my hand out of the droptop. I brought my hand down realizing what a jerk move that was. Honestly, I felt bad driving all the way back to the pits and I apologized to him right away. He was super cool about it and said don’t worry I would’ve done the same thing.
“After winning a little bit of money I decided to enter the stick shift class also,” Muehlhausen continued. “There were a lot of faster cars in the stick shift class, but most of them had troubles hooking and getting traction due to the track conditions. They would get out of it when they started to lose traction, but I’m so used to driving sideways that I would just stay in it and drive around them. Sketchy was in it’s element for the track conditions. I have no idea how, but everything just worked in my favor, and I ended up winning this class also. I was in complete shock. I’d really like to thank my wife, Sarah, for helping me in between rounds and always being my support. She was the reason why I entered the roll race class to begin with. I thought the clutch was messed up and not worth racing it and she told me to do it and see how far we can get in the class. I’m really glad I did it.
“It’s crazy because my car is set up for mostly street racing and roll racing,” admits Muehlhausen. “I like roll racing due to the fact that you don’t tear up your car as bad – it’s a lot easier on everything. I actually love both forms of racing, but it’s really hard to set up a car to do both roll racing and dig racing if you want to be serious about it. But I haven’t really worked on setting up Sketchy for dig racing a whole lot. With some of my friends’ help, we are working on getting Sketchy set up for dig racing over the winter. Until then, I just enjoy going out and getting sketchy in Sketchy, and watching people’s reactions to it.”
