Vintage Pontiac Firebird restored by CNC students. Courtesy of CNC Prince George.

By Veronica Beltran

from scraps to gold

From the ashes this Firebird rose: CNC students restore vintage car

Jan 29, 2020 | 3:01 PM

PRINCE GEORGE–After six years and more than 1,000 hours of work, students from CNC’s Motor Vehicle Body Repairer program have resurrected a 1970’s vintage muscle car.

You wouldn’t even know by looking at it, that the Pontiac Firebird was nothing more than a skeleton of a Trans Am when Aaron Wall, Ron Loyie, and Jason McKinnon started the program in 2017.

“I wanted to bring a project that students would have a passion for.”– Byron Hayashi, Instructor, CNC Motor Vehicle Body Repairer

The process of putting the car together wasn’t all a smooth ride, in fact, McKinnon mentions that one of the most annoying parts of refurbishing the piece of metal was lining the parts up correctly.

“These old cars aren’t like new ones where everything is an eighth on an inch apart,” he said. “They’re gapped. Pretty big and pretty far off. To make everything lined up and even was probably the hardest thing I have ever achieved working on a vehicle to date.”

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From their hands, and into Travis Ross’, who began the Motor Vehicle Body Repairer program in 2018.

“It was pretty interesting to get all the parts together and find what goes where.”–Travis Ross

The students were faced with several challenges such as finding original parts and even locating the exact same paint colour.

Loyie and McKinnon say that returning to the school to see the finished product was bittersweet as they wished they had been involved from the beginning all the way until the end.

The Trans Am won’t be hidden away, it will be available to the public for viewing at car shows across the City.