Gilmore Car Museum high school students to compete in Great Race

I got a chuckle the other day when car friend and Concours committee member Brad Wire of Gun Lake, MI dropped me an email stating the he’d “stepped in it again!”   He used the email to announce an adventure he had volunteered for next summer involving students enrolled in Gilmore Car Museum’s Garage Works program.  More on the adventure in a moment.

Readers who attended the Lake Bluff Concours last summer may have met Brad.  He and a 1909 Buick chassis held down a spot in Lake Bluff Park at the car show across from The Boulevard Inn.  Since 2011 Brad has volunteered each year to trailer a vintage vehicle to the Concours on loan from the Gilmore Car Museum.

Brad brought the vintage Buick chassis to the Concours so he could share his enthusiasm for the Garage Works program and spread the word of its success.  For those who didn’t stop to chat with Brad and learn about Garage Works, permit me to do so now.

Now in its 8th year, the Gilmore Garage Works program was formed on the campus of the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, MI to serve youth interested in attending automotive shop classes.  Sadly many local high schools in the area had eliminated shop classes and Gilmore saw an opportunity to fill a void.

The Gilmore utilizes its facility and staff members, along with up to 20 volunteer mentors made up of car enthusiasts like Brad, a volunteer for the past six years.  The mentors range in age from late 40s to mid-70s. The Garage Works is an after-school program that provides hands-on involvement with maintaining and restoring vintage cars.

The unique program is held on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. and each semester is offered to about two dozen students in grades 9 through 12.  Mostly young men sign up but Brad points out that a few young women have also attended the classes and have done equally well.  In addition to the in-shop experience at Gilmore, the teens are also taken on field trips to events like the Grand Rapids auto show, Off Bros. vintage car collection in Richland, MI and the Rat Rod Shop in Grand Rapids.

Over the course of the program’s existence, the students and mentors have completely restored the chassis of a 1931 Willys-Knight and 1909 Buick, a handful of vintage motorcycles and are currently working on a Model A pickup, 1948 Lincoln V-12 and a 1935 Packard sedan.

What about that adventure Brad Wire signed up that I mentioned earlier.  A number of the students and three of the mentors (that’s Brad) have signed up to form a team to participate in the June 2017 running of the esteemed Great Race of vintage automobiles – now in its 34th year.  Over 120 pre-1972 autos will be traveling more than 2200 miles from Jacksonville, FL to Traverse City, MI in a nine-day vintage car endurance rally competition.

The rally begins on June 24th in Jacksonville and will follow pretty closely the legendary Dixie Highway all the way to Michigan.  Along the way the Gilmore team will make stops to visit interesting auto-related sites like Coker Tire Co. in Chattanooga, Corvette Assembly in Bowling Green and Hostetler Hudson Museum in Shipshewana.

Of the over 100 entrants in this year’s Great Race, about six teams are from high school and college programs.  The school teams will participate in the X-Cup Division of the rally and won’t compete for cash but will vie instead for possible student scholarship funds and “an experience of a life time,” according to Fred Colgren, Education Director of the Gilmore Car Museum.

According to a Gilmore press release, the students will become the navigators, guiding the driver’s way and making all the calculations during the trip.  Mechanical repairs are the sole duty of the teenage team members.  Precise turn-by-turn written instructions that include such directions as how many seconds to sit at stop signs or exact speed and distance to accelerate to, the navigators must assist the driver without using formal maps, GPS or calculators.  Stopwatches and pencils are allowed.

Also in the press release it stated that last year’s winner of the Great Race concluded the event in just 1 minute and 20.3 seconds off the perfect race time.

The aforementioned 1935 Packard has been selected to run the Great Race.  Bea Dinger donated the stately car to Garage Works as a restoration project, her late husband Bud had started the restoration of the luxury car before his untimely death.  The Packard has been worked on for several years by various groups of Garage Works students and this coming winter and spring a concerted efforts will be required – by students, museum staff and the mentors – in order finish the car in time for the rally.  A Ford Model A pick-up will also be completed and will serve as the race team’s back-up vehicle.

I asked Brad what his motivation is for being a Garage Works mentor.   Says Brad, “I love the positive impact this program has on kids.  I’ve seen how it improves the young people’s attitude about school and their outlook on life.”  He goes on to share, “We mentors get as much or more out of the program as the kids because we know we are making a positive impact on their life.”

The Gilmore team’s participation in the Great Race rally will cost some money…$30,000 is an estimated amount.  Thankfully the travel, motel and food expenses for the students and the mentors are being picked up by an anonymous donor and by the museum.

I’ll ask Brad to get in touch with me in July following his adventure to let me know the outcome of the Great Race.  I’ll be sure to share his report with readers.

Mike Buckland, retired machinist from Hastings area, is shown with two area high school students who are enrolled in the Garage Works youth program on the campus of the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners.  Buckland, along with two-dozen other retired mentors, volunteers his time working with 25 eligible students by showing the ins and outs of restoring a vintage automobile.  In June of next year, a team of Garage Work teens and mentors will participate in the Great Race, a 2200 mile rally that starts in Florida and ends up in Traverse City.  The Gilmore team will participate in the race in a restored 1935 Packard that has been restored by the Garage Work team members.


Photos provided by the Gilmore Car Museum