Shop Intern’s Skills to be Spotlighted in TV Documentary
12/17/2008 10:13:42 AM
An 18-year-old Pennsylvania shop intern is getting a double-dose of reality – valuable hands-on experience working in a restoration shop and a role as himself in an upcoming TV documentary on the National Geographic Channel.
Steve Schwartz, a collision repair technology student at the Philadelphia-area Eastern Center for Arts and Technology, will be featured in “A Car Czar,” a documentary about auto restoration set to air in January or February.
Schwartz, who interns at Marquis Auto Restoration in Philadelphia, will help restore a Z28 Camaro, a 1950s show car and an amphibious vehicle, he told local paper The Globe. The show car needs extensive body work, while the Camaro needs a basic body installation, he said.
“My purpose in the documentary is to be the eyes of the audience," he said. “When they're explaining or teaching me something, they're teaching the people watching.”
Schwartz is undecided between restoration or collision repair for his career track and spends three nights a week at Marquis performing paint and body filling tasks. The restoration shop’s techs don’t use power tools and instead perform all work by hand, he added.
“Even though I learn a lot in the classroom, I get to see the real side of the industry at the shop,” he said. “I’m getting a feel for what it’s really like out there.”
Schwartz plans to continue his education next year at either the Ohio Technical College or Pennsylvania College of Technology. Whether he chooses restoration or collision repair, Schwartz said he’s certain his career will be interesting.
“There’s a lot of problem-solving that goes into it,” he said. “Both restoration and collision repair let you be more creative than you could fixing the inside of cars.”
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