The Young Mechanics Building the Lowrider of the Future
How does a teacher get high-school students to show up early and wait at the door, eager for class to begin? This is how.
“It all started in this room,” says Galen Hartman, 57, a veteran collision body-shop owner turned high-school teacher. We’re in his auto shop on a campus of the Sacramento Academic and Vocational Academy (SAVA) charter school, and Hartman’s nine teenage students have gathered in a semicircle. Behind him is a candy-apple-red 1964 Chevy Impala, with its engine, other guts, and most of its interior removed. Hartman is explaining why this Impala is special.
“The vision came from your mom,” he proclaims, pointing at Nayeli Rodriguez, a 14-year-old freshman from a well-known lowriding family in town.
A year ago, Rodriguez’s mother, ShaVolla, was in the classroom and had the idea for the shop students build a lowrider. And not just any lowrider. Kids need to learn skills for tomorrow’s workforce. So why not build an electric lowrider? One with all the traditional lowrider features—a car that can hydraulically hop and ride on three wheels, with custom art all over it. Only no combustion chambers and no gears. A lowrider with a fully electric powertrain.
“I was a little skeptical,” Nayeli Rodriguez says with a sigh, “because when you grow up around lowriders”—her parents have six—“you would never think about converting one to electric. Ever! Once I learned that it was going to be us kids working on it, that’s when I got excited.”
Hartman also got excited. So did Morri Elliott, executive director of educational programs, and Summer Ash, director of SAVA. Together they went hunting for grants. A local dealer, King City Classics, donated a ’64 Impala, a traditional lowriding vehicle. An alphabet soup of Sacramento-area agencies (SMUD, SMAQMD) donated electric vehicles—a Nissan Leaf, a Chevy Volt—that the students could “carcass” for components.
“All of a sudden it went kaboom!” Hartman says. “We had the students. We got the car. Now we’re moving.”
“It’s going to be the first ever,” says senior Wyatt Showen, standing next to the gutted Impala. “This will be the first true lowrider conversion built by high schoolers in the world, I’m pretty sure.”
From the start last year, Hartman, who also teaches auto shop at nearby American River College, believed his students had it in them. What he didn’t expect was that this build would put a spotlight on the historic inflection point the whole car world is facing, as the EV phenomenon comes alive.
On this day in shop class, Ash Dalal, a local University of California–trained engineer, is teaching the students how to use a state-of-the-art 3-D scanner so they can get a footprint for CAD and drafting purposes. Dalal owns a shop called Ohm Electric Cars, and he’s been donating his time. He has the scanner rigged to a laptop, and the students are scanning the Impala, beaming the digital mojo into every crevice.
“We’re creating curriculum,” Dalal explains, “going through the same engineering process that they would do in the actual industry. The design, the analysis, the overall execution. Then the students actually do it.”
They have to figure out where to put the batteries, the motor, the inverter, the software. How to make it all talk to one another, how to make the car go, how to make it stop and make it safe. “We want air-conditioning,” Hartman says. “The ’64 Impala had an AC, but it ran off the combustion engine. So now we have to convert it. You want to have a heater? How are you going to put a heater in there? Where is the heat going to come from?”
Currently, the car is still a slightly dented and gutted Impala, but most of the components are ready to go, including a high-end stereo donated by a local shop called Acme Tops & Tunes. Already, the students have taken the Impala to car shows to talk up what they’re doing. The first time, this past summer at Cal Expo in Sacramento, the Impala did not get the response the students expected. California’s capital has a vibrant lowrider scene, and some of the OG builders turned up their noses at the idea of an electric lowrider.
“We got a lot of backlash from lowrider people,” Showen says. “They were flabbergasted. They took a step back and said, ‘Okay, that’s dumb. This isn’t cool.’” That impulse mirrors the attitude of many gearhead groups—hot-rodders, race-car builders—who believe the EV movement is pushing aside their piston-thumping passion. “As soon as we explained to them that we’re high schoolers,” Wyatt says, “and it’s going to be the first ever, they calmed down.”
Since then, some old-school lowrider builders have come into the class to help out. Meanwhile, the students and their parents are all for real-world skills that can lead to future jobs. “It’s a class that’s actually teaching us something,” enthuses Brandt Smedstad, also a senior. “With a class like this, that’s hands-on, I could almost go get a job anywhere that’s doing automotive or EV. Plus, we’re getting publicity.”
“We’re going to be pretty ‘famous,’ ” promises another student, senior Scott Williams, making air quotes. “But this class isn’t just for fun. I’m taking this for a career path. Because electric cars are going to be the future. Especially in California. Hopefully I’ll get into a good college and find a good job working on electric cars.”
At the same time, something else is going on in Hartman’s auto shop. Something that has nothing to do with EVs. “This is my favorite class,” Williams says. “Out of the whole week. Out of the whole time I’ve been in school.”
Better than chemistry?
“Better.”
Better than reading Shakespeare?
“Better. Other teachers might make you feel bad if you’re doing something wrong,” he says. “Mr. Hartman makes us feel like a team. A team working on a car.”
“That’s what working on cars is all about,” says Smedstad, who’s been tinkering with rock crawlers and hot rods all his life with his family. “We come together. Something breaks, we come together and fix it.”
Therein lies a truth about automotive passion, one that gets talked about a lot in this class. Working on cars—whether it’s an EV lowrider, grandpa’s Silverado, or a Spec Miata readying for race day—is about learning, but it’s also about family, friendship, leadership, and community. About making memories.
The electric lowrider will probably be finished in the spring. When it’s done, it will live at the California Automobile Museum in Sacramento. SAVA has a trailer, which will feature a mural painted by a local lowrider artist, that will be used to move the Impala to lowrider and EV events. There’s even talk of taking the students on a class trip to the SEMA Show in Vegas next year.
“I’m graduating this December,” Smedstad says, “but I’m hoping that after I graduate, I can still come in and do this until the car is done.” So wait, he wants to go to class at his high school, even after he’s graduated?
Well done, Mr. Hartman. Class dismissed.
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