The 2009 Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills Competition state finals are this Friday, April 17, 2009, at Wally Parks NHRA Museum at the L.A. County Fairgrounds in Pomona, CA, according to AAA. This nationwide competition for 11th and 12th grade high school auto shop students qualify through a team written examination. The combined score of the two highest scoring students from each school is the team score and counts 40% in the state finals.In most states the ten teams scoring highest on the state qualifying exam then move on to the "hands-on" state finals.
In the "hands-on" competition, new Ford Motor Company vehicles are uniformly "bugged" so that each team has identical malfunctions to diagnose and repair. The competition requires repairs to be made with the highest quality workmanship in the lowest total time.
The winning two-person team from each state and their instructor are provided expense-paid trips to the national finals in June. More information is available here.
The list of California state finalists draws from Agoura, Arvin, Bishop Union, Morro Bay, Ontario, Poway, Ramona, San Clemente, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Ynez High Schools.
Since these are new Fords are we to assume that the teams will not get credit for fixing malfunctions that were not intentionally created for the competition?
