Youth show off custom Jeep during Cruise Night
Yearlong school project displayed at Plaza show
Asupercharged, 2015 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited throbbed and bounced on its oversized, knobby tires as Chris Coriz guided the open-topped vehicle to its parking space on the Santa Fe Plaza.
Tourists and locals gawked as the shiny red Jeep took its place Friday afternoon among a Ford Cobra, a vintage, two-cycle Saab and dozens of other classics. It was all part of the Cruise Night 2018 event sponsored by the Santa Fe Vintage Car Club.
No one would mistake the Jeep for an off-the-showroom-floor model. It was modified into a one-of-a-kind vehicle thanks to the handiwork of automotive technology students from the Early College Opportunities Applied Science Magnet School, or ECO, part of Santa Fe Public Schools.
About 70 students took part in the project, which took nearly the entire school year. Though some students were planning careers in the auto industry, Coriz, the automotive technology instructor at ECO, said it’s a practical life lesson for others — both boys and girls.
“I want to be a pediatric nurse but it’s always good to know things like that,” said student Ashley Mena.
A rising senior, Mena, 17, has already taken several auto collision classes and welding. She said rebuilding the Jeep was a labor of teamwork for her and her classmates.
“All of us did everything,” she said. “We got a new hood for it and I helped paint the hood. All of us kind of worked together; we put on side steps and the fenders and the suspension.”
The Jeep was made possible through a partnership pilot program between ECO and Specialty Equipment Market Association, a trade association that helps businesses involved in vehicle customizations and includes distributors, promoters, manufacturers and re-sellers.
“The final build is amazing,” Zane Clark, SEMA’s senior director of education, said in a statement. “Our hope was to provide students with a unique experience that would educate and inspire future industry professionals, and the end result is a top-quality vehicle that looks great and performs remarkably.”
The Jeep will auctioned later this month online and the proceeds will go to creating a sustainable program for ECO Santa Fe.
Students designed and built the Jeep with the goal “to look really cool with all the nice after-market parts that are available for Jeeps these days, and at the same it’s going to be functionable,” said Coriz, who teaches his students the finer points of body work, painting and mechanics.
“We modified it completely,” he added. “The buyer that purchases it can actually take it off-roading and it’s going to actually hold up, it’s not going to break down.”
Multiple manufacturers “donated tons of parts” for the rebuild, he said.
Designing what the Jeep would eventually morph into and getting the parts took the first several months and the actual rebuilding didn’t start until January. Coriz and several students attended the annual SEMA conference in Las Vegas, Nev., to get a look at the spectrum of opportunities in the automotive industry.
Several students received job offers during the event and saw the real world of auto technology while networking
with industry professionals, Coriz said.
Students said they learned that dealing with cars goes way beyond twisting wrenches.
Jacob Ortega has taken all four auto collision classes the school offers and has always been interested in all sorts of vehicles. “I am extremely interested in collision and repair,” said Ortega, who will be a junior.
He doesn’t have far to look for his next project: His own 1970 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS doesn’t run.
“It has a blown motor and I have absolutely no idea what’s wrong with it,” said Ortega, 16. He plans on replacing the engine and refinishing the car.
“Everybody thinks it’s turning a wrench, doing oil changes, rebuilding engines — yes, that’s a huge part of it. But we also talked about the financing part and developing web pages and being managers and owners of companies,” said Coriz.
Students found important lessons among those lug nuts, said Coriz. “We were on a schedule, we had to get it done by a certain date … they had to work a lot of extra hours to get this particular Jeep built and that’s real life.”