DEARBORN, Mich. (June 11, 2015) — Two student technicians from Oregon high school took top honors recently in the 2015 Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills Competition.
The annual contest gathers the nation's top young automotive minds to display their skills and compete for the national title and millions of dollars in scholarships.
Ford said this year's competition featured 100 top automotive technology students from all 50 states, with each state represented by a two-student team and their high school instructor. The competition culminated with the crowning of a national champion on June 9 at Ford Motor Co.'s World Headquarters in Dearborn. The champions were Morgan White and Jay Saunders from Vale High School in Vale, Ore., under the tutelage of instructor Drew Barnes.
For the National Finals, entrants took both a written exam and participated in a timed event where they repaired deliberately-installed “bugs” in identical 2015 Ford Mustang Fastbacks with 3.7L V6 engines. Ford said they used the OTC Encore, a diagnostics tool made by Robert Bosch L.L.C., to identify issues and fix the vehicles.
The competition began in January when nearly 12,000 high school juniors and seniors took an online exam testing their automotive technology knowledge.