Jeffrey Elder and Anthony Fraley became automotive detectives Tuesday.

The Michigan 18-year-olds had to figure out which deliberately placed malfunctions lurked in a shiny new 2006 Ford Mustang.

Elder, who lives in Ft. Gratiot, leaned over the fender of the cobalt blue Mustang convertible and carefully examined the car’s computer. His teammate, Fraley, of Yale checked the back of the car and found problems with the right taillight.

In a $6-million scholarship competition to promote the careers of auto technicians, pairs of students from each state faced off Tuesday at Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn to detect and repair identically rigged 2006 Ford Mustangs. The combined score from the hands-on competition and a 100-question written exam given Monday determined the Ford-AAA Student Auto Skills Competition winner.

The competition highlights the importance of auto technicians at a time when demand is high, said Mark Brown, executive vice president of AAA club services. The auto industry will need 35,000 new technicians each year through 2010, according to estimates by the U.S. Department of Labor.

“It’s a good message, too, with a lot of unemployment going on,” Brown added. “It’s actually a great career.”

There’s a bottom-line benefit for car owners, too. Skilled auto technicians can save consumers money. As Michigan’s fuel prices hover at $2.86 a gallon for regular unleaded (according to AAA’s estimates Tuesday), car owners can gain fuel efficiency by maintaining spark plugs, air filters and tire inflation.

Elder, who graduated this spring from Port Huron Northern High School, and Fraley, a 2006 Yale High School grad, met while attending satellite classes at St. Clair County Technical Education Center in Marysville. They combined their training with teamwork to decipher the madness of their rigged machine. “We had duties and just did them,” Elder said. “It was check the basics first, obviously, and go with the worst-case scenario last.”

Every car in the competition had the same nine bugs, including a bad fuse panel that disabled the car’s computer and prevented it from starting.

The winners of the competition were Aaron Clay and Bradley J. Bolton from Paris High School in Paris, Texas. They diagnosed and repaired their Mustang’s malfunctions in 29 minutes, 34 seconds. Each won a $2,500 individual scholarship and can choose a scholarship from one of five top technical schools: Baran Institute of Technology in East Windsor, Conn.; Universal Technical Institute with a main campus in Avondale, Ariz.; Ohio Technical College in Cleveland; WyoTech with seven locations; and the University of Northwestern Ohio in Lima, Ohio.

Elder and Fraley shut the hood of their convertible less than 10 minutes after the Texas team and cruised to the judging area. Their make-it-simple strategy paid off: They won sixth place, each earning $600 and a scholarship from one of three schools.

Ford and AAA distributed more than $6 million in prizes and scholarships among all levels of the competition.

Elder and Fraley plan to attend Universal Technical Institute in Glendale Heights, Ill., in September and train for careers in auto repair and maintenance.

“I could see myself doing it for the rest of my life,” Fraley said.

This entry was posted by Taman Siswa on Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Education News, Scholarship. Tags: College, Education News, Scholarship, Student, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.