High- achievers ride to school in style for first day of class
It’s stealth- fighter sleek, powered by 600 horses and costs about $ 300,000.
Still, Reginard Adu might have arrived at school quicker had he jumped on a bicycle, so awful was the traffic Tuesday morning.
But then the freshman from Rogers Park wouldn’t have been able to unbend his 5- foot- 11- inch frame and carefully step out of the black Lamborghini Huracan in front of dozens of cheering students outside Wells Community Academy High School in West Town.
“It was exhilarating,” said Adu, 15. “It felt like a roller coaster on the go. . . . You don’t see that sort of thing in Rogers Park. It makes me feel special.”
And that was the point, for 11highachieving kids— some of whom got a ride to school in a luxury sports car, while others were treated to a helicopter ride along the lakefront for the first day of school.
The cars and drivers came courtesy of Xtreme Xperience, a company that provides clients with luxury cars to drive on race tracks across the U. S. The event was organized by The Annex, a Chicago- based ad agency about a block away from Wells. It’s the second year in a row for the event.
So what’s the message it sends? “It’s about knowing exactly what you need to do for a year. So that the following fall when you come back to school, this could be a possibility for you, and then you roll out of the car and your entire community is waiting and cheering and clapping and welcoming you back to school,” said Rita Raichoudhuri, Wells’ principal. “It’s that moment of glory.”
Raichoudhuri said the school’s honor roll has doubled due in large part to the buzz from last year’s event.
Adu’s driver said the trip from Rogers Park to school took about 50 minutes. “We hit a lot of traffic, but that gave us more time in the car,” said Ryan Love, the driver. And somewhere in all of that traffic, Love said he managed to shift into second gear and reach 70 mph — the equivalent of a leisurely stroll for a car with a top speed of 202mph.