Internship Profile: Auto Restoration

The Petersen Automotive Museum

When Dick Messer, Director of The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles came out to talk to the Auto Restoration students 3 years ago, Ryan Lander knew that working at The Petersen would be his dream internship. The junior from Oklahoma had the opportunity to pursue his dream this past summer.

Ryan spent his summer working for the premier automotive museum in country learning about museum operations and preparing cars for high end car shows. Ryan had the opportunity to work in the best part of the museum that is rarely open to the public – The Vault. The Vault houses all of the cars that are not currently on display and Robert E. Petersen’s personal collection. This gave Ryan the chance to see and operate some of the rarest and most expensive cars in the museum’s possession.

Ryan also became an expert at detailing automobiles for display as well as for shows. Ryan attended many prestigious car shows and was responsible for detailing The Petersen’s entries. At The Quail Lodge Motoring Classic, held at Pebble Beach, the museum entered a 1956 Jaguar XKSS that was formerly owned by the late actor Steve McQueen. The car won Best in Show. After the show, Dick Messer told Ryan that he thought the reason why they won was because the hood was open on the car and the engine was spotless and polished. This was a huge compliment to Ryan as he had spent the entire morning of the show detailing the engine compartment.

Ryan also had the opportunity to meet many famous people in the classic car industry including Barry Meguiar, Jay Leno, Chip Foose, Alan Taylor and even a few stars such as Will Ferrell, Peter Fonda and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top.

After completing his internship at The Petersen, Ryan said that he will purse a job with museum upon graduation.

Internship Profile: Auto Restoration

Cinema Vehicle Services

Tim Stangohr, a sophomore Auto Restoration Management major from Newton, KS had a very unique opportunity to spend his summer with Cinema Vehicle Services in North Hollywood, CA. CVS is the premier film car rental business in the U.S. CVS prepare and ship cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats and equipment to studios and shoots on location across the nation. Tim learned how to work quickly, making any necessary modifications which included customization, personalization, stunts, mounting cameras, cutting vehicles in half to film inside of, and building them tough enough to be blown up, sunk or jumped.

CVS has over 800 cars. Tim worked in the restoration department which maintained and repaired the cars for rental or to be resold at auction. Tim said this experience helped him learn what it takes to be a caretaker of a large collection. Tim said one of the more interesting projects that he worked on was preparing a 1970’s GMC city bus to be blown up in an action scene which involved removing the fuel and fluids, fuel tank and powertrain.

Tim had three goals for his summer internship: to expand his auto restoration skills and knowledge, to help define his career goals and to be able to observe and participate in the human resources aspects of the job. Tim said that his summer experience was very rewarding. He also encourages fellow students to do an internship as it helped him focus on individual goals for success.

Internship Profile: Auto Restoration

H Machining

Aaron Herman, an Automotive Restoration Technology major spent interterm practicing his machining skills and learning about business operations at his family’s company, H Machining in Ohio. Aaron spent Monday through Thursday learning how to operate the lathe, mill and CNC machine. He also became proficient at reading blue prints. Fridays and Saturdays were spent in the front office learning about the operations of the company. In the evenings Aaron worked on restoring his father’s corvette. Through this experience, Aaron said that he learned that “a boss has more pressure than I would want to handle at this time. I would rather be working on cars and running machines.”

Internship Profile: Auto Restoration

“My internship at the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Stuttgart, Germany was the best experience of my life,” said Michael Schaarschmidt. Michael spent six months working on such vehicles as the 500K, the 1928 SSK, the 600 Pullman and the 300SL Gullwing.

Michael said that even though he had studied German for many years, the language barrier made things very interesting at work. He learned many car parts and tools in the special dialect, “Schwaebisch,” spoken in Stuttgart. Michael also had a chance to teach some co-workers a little English.

In addition to working in the shop, Michael enjoyed driving cars out on the Mercedes-Benz test track. During his free time, he traveled throughout Europe including Poland, where he visited a restoration shop. Michael commented that the shop owner wanted to hire him on the spot because he went to a school that teaches restoration.

Internship Profile: Auto Restoration

Randy Elber had the opportunity to work for one of the top restoration shops in country, the Paul Russell Company near Boston. Randy said one of the hardest things for him to learn was to be comfortable around cars that were worth millions of dollars. Randy spent most of his summer working in the mechanical shop doing component restoration and general services on 3 to 4 different cars weekly.

Randy spent every Thursday evening at The Museum of Fine Arts with 16 of Ralph Lauren’s cars, most of which were restored by Paul Russell. Each Thursday evening, at the request of the museum, Paul and Randy would open the hoods on all of the cars in front of hundreds of museum visitors.

“The shop experience was unbelievable, from working on some of the rarest and most expensive cars in the world, to learning from some of the best restorers in the world, it was career changing. I spent everyday learning new techniques and gaining valuable experience. Restoring cars of that caliber gave me a new respect for an original and correct restoration,” said Randy.