Garry Thoms found the perfect wreck for teaching his auto body students. Five years later, his wreck is ready for the road and his pupils are ready for the real world.

It’s not hard to find the Robert L Borden Business and Technical Institute’s collision repair shop. Just follow the noise. Open its door and you’ll find a clanging beehive of high school students busy building their collision repair skills.

Nearly everything in the swarm of activity is in a perfect state of “in progress,” with one notable exception: a beautifully restored 1977 Ford F150 Ranger tucked away in the far corner. In its own way, the truck has graduated.

Five years prior, Garry Thoms, Borden’s auto body instructor, paid $400 for the classic, which he had dragged in by a tow truck: a perfect wreck.

“It came in in pieces,” said Clairmont Prince, one of Thoms’s students. “There was nothing on it. A tow truck brought it and everybody just pushed it inside. And we started working on it from scratch.”

It was a daunting project to the grade nine and 10 students who first worked on the truck. “Their advice to me when it arrived here was just call a tow truck,” Thoms said. “What was amazing was those kids with that advice were the ones who followed the truck all the way through it’s process.”

Sir Robert L Borden Business and Technical Institute is a trades-oriented high school in Scarborough, Ontario. In their first year, students get to try out six different trades to get a taste of their different options. Classes range from woodworking to baking to, of course, collision repair.

In their second year students narrow their focus to two or three areas depending on what they’ve liked and where they’ve shown aptitude. As students progress, they’ll decide on an area of focus and go out in the field as part of Borden’s mandatory co-op program.

In the classroom, by grade 11 students will have decided on a specialty. They take a double credit in their chosen field, which is when Thoms can start getting into the more difficult aspects of collision repair.

“You’re only kidding yourself if you think you’re going to turn out a mechanic or an auto body technician out of high school,” Thoms said. “But you’re giving a student a chance for a real taste of what the trade is like and then they can make a more accurate decision on if this is for them.”

For Thoms’s students working on the F150, year one consisted mostly of clearing off rust and cleaning. In the truck’s road life, it became pretty good at hiding pounds and pounds of dirt in every available crevasse, which had to be chiselled and blasted off.

“By the time they’re done that, their skill level is at a point where they can start putting in patch panels and doing a bit of welding on the truck,” Thoms said. “And once that’s done, they’re in grade 11–12. Then they’re ready for painting and so is the truck.”

The engine on the truck did run when Thoms brought it in, though just barely. There was no oil pressure and it clanged and knocked as it idled: another perfect wreck. All of which gave the school’s mechanical department a chance to hone their skills fixing, rebuilding and tweaking the Ford’s mechanical mess.

“It’s a great project for the entire school as far as transportation sector is concerned,” Thoms said.

Clairmont Prince started at Borden right about the time the truck came in. When we visited at the end of the school year he was in his senior year and had moved up to helping teach Thoms’s younger students. He saw a lot of the truck’s transformation as he made his way through secondary school.

“This truck was a mess,” Prince said. “I didn’t even want to work on it. But you know, I had to put in my time and just get it finished. ... And then you end up liking it.”

He liked it enough, in fact, to turn his skills into a career; when I talked to him last, Prince was hoping to start an apprenticeship at Heritage Ford in Scarborough this fall.

Similarly, the Ford F150 was looking at a future outside of academia. Now that all the work was done, it was looking for a driver. Thoms had listed it at $5,600 (a deal, according to the appraiser they had look at it).

For Thoms’s purposes, it’s a good truck, but it doesn’t fit his purposes any longer. It’s not a learner’s project any more—it’s road ready. “Now it needs to go,” he said. “We need another wreck in here.”

School’s out for the F150, at least until it breaks down again. In the mean time, Borden is searching for its next wreck.