The classic automobile business is booming like never before. However, collectible cars owners are now facing a massive challenge: the shortage of qualified technicians and restoration specialists. The Piston Foundation is setting out to change this. The organization aims to help build a new and diverse generation of tradespeople in the collector car industry. The Foundation goal is to make skilled trade education and hands-on training more accessible for more people.
We sat down with Piston Foundation President and COO Jeff Mason to learn more about the organization.
Visit the Piston Foundation website
Can you elaborate on the primary mission and vision of the Piston Foundation?
The mission of the Piston Foundation is to help young car enthusiasts turn their interest into a career as a collector car technician. The Piston career initiative awards college and tech-school scholarships. It connects aspiring technicians with jobs, and champions skilled trade careers in automotive restoration. We are nurturing the passion and talent of the next generation and providing a career path into the collector car industry.
- Jeff Mason, COO of Piston Foundation, and Robert Minnick, Founder and CEO of Piston Foundation
- Piston Foundation Academy
- Piston Foundation at Lime Rock Park
- Piston Foundation Zack Wiernusz
How does the Foundation plan to make a lasting impact on the car community?
The declining number of skilled technicians entering the collector car industry each year represents a crisis for the car community. It is not a lack of interest keeping young people away. It’s limited access to the education and training needed to pursue these careers.
To reverse the decline and make these skills-based careers accessible, the collector car industry must do what other trades have done. It must create a career path that supports education, hands-on training, and employment networking. The Piston Foundation career initiative is creating a path young people can follow to prepare for these job opportunities.
The Piston career initiative has a place for everyone in the collector car community and the industry more broadly, to be a part of this workforce development program. Local high schools, tech colleges, car clubs and events can support advocacy for skilled-trade automotive careers. Community partners can help promote fundraising campaigns that support our scholarship and apprenticeship programs. Industry employers can support the foundation and hire from this new pipeline of talent.
Piston can help solve the shortage of qualified workers and build a sustainable future for the collector car community. By building this youth education and employment network.
What are some of the key programs and initiatives currently being run by the Piston Foundation?
The Foundation career initiative helps people turn an interest in classic cars into a career as a technician. From career awareness, through auto-tech education, to on-the-job training, Piston programs support them every step of the way.
Our Scholars report the personal impact of our program is far greater than the scholarship support they receive. These future technicians feel validated and empowered by the car community to seize the opportunities of a skills-based career in the collector car industry.
Career Awareness
Auto-tech students learn about Piston through our outreach to high school auto teachers. But also to college auto programs, our community partners, car enthusiasts clubs, classic car events. And of course, through our website and social media. These young people are learning that a skills-based career is possible.
Piston Scholarship Program: For Auto-Tech Education
The high cost of automotive education is a barrier for many future technicians. Piston Scholarships provide tuition assistance that lets young car enthusiasts get the education they need to begin their career.
Students with a financial need, who are accepted or enrolled in a college auto-tech program, can apply for a Piston scholarship of up to $5,000 per year. The Foundation supports Piston Scholars with coaching, mentoring, and enrichment experiences that help them excel in their programs. Our Scholars have a 98% completion rate.
Piston Apprenticeship Program: For On-the-Job Training
Aspiring technicians need hands-on training to turn their education into a career. Piston Apprenticeships connect them with full time job opportunities so they can learn the trade and develop their skills.
Apprentices typically work one to two years in auto restoration, classic car maintenance, or collection management to learn the real-world skills needed for the job. Piston provides apprentices with financial assistance for tools and other necessities. All this, while they gain the experience they need to become fully billable technicians earning a living wage.
How do these programs specifically benefit the car community and its members?
For everyone in the collector car community, the challenge of owning a classic car is keeping it running well and on the road. We want to enjoy these cars long into the future. It takes trained technicians and car craft specialists to make that possible.
In collector car shops and businesses, the shrinking pipeline of young workers and the increasing retirements of craftspeople has created a shortage of skilled technicians that threatens the longevity of collector car hobby and the long-term value of collector car investments.
Our mission is to help solve the technician shortage so the collector car community can continue to thrive. Since 2022, The Piston Foundation has helped more than 50 students start their auto restoration careers at schools in Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. As Piston delivers on its mission, this pipeline of new talent is beginning to make an impact. Nine Piston Scholars have graduated from their programs and are now working in the industry.
As a public charity, Piston works for the community and gives every car enthusiast a way to be an active stakeholder in the next generation of technicians, the preservation of car craft skills, and the future of the hobby.
How does the Piston Foundation secure funding for its various initiatives?
Funding for Piston programs comes from the car community. Piston is supported by individual gifts, grants, and classic car donations. People feel inspired to support skilled trade education and career opportunities. And also to give back to the enthusiast community that has been so important to their own lives. Car folks are generous people and Piston is a way they can give to what they love.
- Piston Foundation at the Lime Rock Historics
- Piston Foundation student at work
- Piston Foundation at the Lime Rock Historics
- Piston Foundation COO Jef Mason at the Lime Rock Historics
Can you discuss any major donors or partners that significantly contribute to the Foundation?
We partner with organizations across the car community. These businesses generously support the Piston mission through giving, events, promotions, and fundraising.
Our two key Community Partners are Bring a Trailer, the online vehicle auction platform, and Lime Rock Park, the historic American auto racing track.
Bring a Trailer (BaT) and Piston created the Cars for Piston Scholars campaign to provide funding for scholarships through the auction of classic cars donated to Piston. BaT generously provides their online platform and donates all auction fees. In 2023, this partnership raised an incredible $253,108 for Piston scholarships.
Our organization partnered with Lime Rock Park to create the Piston Technician Award. This Award recognizes the essential contribution auto technicians make to the collector car community. We presented it annually to a working technician who is chosen by their peers during the famous Lime Rock Historic Festival racing event.
Piston Community Partners include other businesses from the car community. That includes classic car dealers, vehicle appraisers, specialty manufacturers, after-market retailers, shops, and auto-related non-profits. Also, Community Partners are essential to the success of the Piston career initiative and are recognized for the contributions. The Foundation encourages every interested organization to reach out to learn more about becoming a partner.
What educational programs does the Piston Foundation offer to car enthusiasts, especially the younger generation?
We offer two educational paths to help the next generation to enter the collector car industry. The Piston Foundation offers young folks a means of receiving skilled trade education through its scholarship and apprenticeship programs. Both programs are designed to facilitate learning opportunities and create a new generation of expert car restoration specialists. If you are a student planning to attend a skilled trade school, explore the details surrounding a Piston Fund Scholarship. You are already working as a technician or looking to gain new skills in the art of car restoration? Then consider applying for apprenticeship placement through the Piston Academy.
How does the Foundation support vocational training or apprenticeship programs in automotive fields?
The Piston Academy helps qualified technicians and re-skilling workers learn the skills and craft of collector car restoration and service by apprenticing with today’s master craftspeople. The Academy provides apprenticeship placements at leading restoration shops, a hands-on learning plan, mentoring, and a training grant.
If you are a working automotive technician who wants to begin a career in collector car restoration and service, a Piston Academy apprenticeship can get you where you want to go. With your interest in the trade and dedication to learning the craft, an apprenticeship can put you on a path to an exciting and rewarding career.
What are some of the biggest challenges the Piston Foundation faces in fulfilling its mission?
When car enthusiasts are introduced to The Piston Foundation they get it. They understand the need for more technicians, they believe in the value of these careers, and they ask “how can I help.” As a start up organization, just four years old, we need all the help we can get.
So, our biggest challenge is finding ways to tell more car enthusiasts about Piston and how they can get involved. Our Community Partners are helping us by sharing our mission with their customers and inviting them to support the cause.
A second big challenge is making sure every young car enthusiast and auto-tech student knows that Piston is here to help them turn their interest into a collector car career. Our Community Partners are helping us build awareness of our career programs. And we’re working with technical high schools in our home state of Connecticut to reach interested students.
Where we need additional help from the car community is reaching high schools, trade-schools, and community colleges across the U.S. who can direct their interested students to Piston. Volunteers and Community Partners will be the key to reaching every aspiring technician.
Piston’s last big challenge is to increase our fundraising to expand our career initiative and help more young people start their career. To meet our goals, we’re expanding our Cars For Piston Scholars campaign and launching a car sweepstake program.
Expand on the Cars For Piston Scholars initiative
Cars For Piston Scholars is our most successful fundraising campaign and we’re adding a new way for supporters to give, called Reserve Auction Overdrive. Car sellers using an auction reserve, pledge some or all of the over-reserve amount of the final auction price to The Piston Foundation as a donation. It’s a win-win for everybody. The seller has a successful auction, is recognized in the community for their impactful donation and more young enthusiasts can start an automotive career. It’s a way to “pay it forward.”
In partnership with Penske Automotive Group and Porsche Fairfield, Piston is launching a sweepstake program. Our first prize car will be a built-to-order Porsche 718 Cayman GTS 4.0. Sweepstake campaigns will give enthusiasts a new way to support the Piston mission while giving themselves a chance to win a beautifully spec’d collector car. It’s another win-win for the car community and a great example of Piston Community Partnerships at work.
What are the long-term goals and strategic plans for the Piston Foundation?
As an organization, The Piston Foundation is focused on building a career path for every person interested in working in the world of collector cars–a pipeline of talent to keep the car community thriving. Today we’re focused on the greatest need, skilled technicians. In the future, we’ll expand to include other roles.
Our goal is to place 100 collector car technicians into the workforce each year and to support them throughout their careers. It’s a modest goal, but a good place to start. To get there we need to focus our efforts on critical, strategic areas.
- Creating deeper connections with the car community through our partners, clubs, events, and museums.
- Developing broader and deeper connections with employers who need collector car technicians.
- Building stronger connections with middle schools and high schools across the country who are teaching our future Piston Scholars.
There’s a national conversation about skilled trades and the value of hands-on work taking place in our country. Piston Foundation wants to be part of that conversation and a voice for the car community. We believe the heritage and culture of the automobile is important. We want to preserve car craft and all the trade skills used to create and restore these beautiful machines. And of course we believe those skills are as valuable and relevant today as ever and worthy of our investment.
Are there any upcoming projects or initiatives that you are particularly excited about?
Everyone at Piston is excited about two new projects.
The first is our car sweepstake program and the launch of our first sweepstake for a 2024 Porsche 718 Cayman GTS 4.0 in Shark Blue. We’re working with Penske Automotive and Porsche Fairfield on the car and it has been a blast to spec out a dream car like this one. We’re getting great support from our community partners who will be helping us promote the campaign and make it a success. The proceeds will go back into the community as Piston scholarships so it’s a win-win for everyone. Thanks to the team at Penske and Porsche Fairfield for their support of this program.
Our second exciting project is a collaboration with BaT (Bring a Trailer) on two custom designed t-shirts that will be available in the BaT Gear Store during Monterey car week. The “Keeping Them Running” and “Sum of Our Parts” designs were created by BaT designer Conner Dubay. They perfectly capture our shared mission to celebrate classic cars and keep them on the road. BaT has been an essential partner in our Cars For Piston Scholars campaign and we’re excited to be doing this new collaboration with them. Shout-out to BaT co-founder Randy Nonnenberg for all his support.
The Piston Foundation
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