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McPherson College’s Degree in Automotive Restoration Shines on CBS’ Sunday Morning
Many in the collector-car hobby are concerned, rightly, that the skills and techniques of restoring vintage cars are in danger of fading away. But there’s hope—one school in particular, in a small Kansas town, is leading the charge and equipping the next generation of auto restorers to carry the classic-car torch.
That school is McPherson College. Featuring a four-year bachelor of science degree in automotive restoration, McPherson attracts students from all over the globe to its campus just an hour north of Wichita. The program is not new but it has been gaining notoriety in the past few years. If you’ve been to any of the big concours in the last few years, including Pebble Beach and The Amelia, you might have noticed a number of fresh faces in, around, and under a few of the cars on the show field. Those are just a handful of the hundreds of students currently enrolled in the McPherson program, and if you saw them in a very slick black Mercedes you even saw their handiwork.
The 1953 Mercedes 300S Cabriolet secured a second-place-in-class finish at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in 2023. That’s not the type of thing that happens overnight—in fact, it took seven years and dozens of students to complete the effort, and it’s one that McPherson is naturally quite proud of.
The program itself traces back to the 1980s, and support from old car faithful has kept the program growing. Jay Leno pledged early support, while thousands of smaller donors have also aided in enabling the college to attract top-notch professors and technology for students to learn from. A recent piece from Lee Cowan on CBS Sunday Morning highlights that the program is about more than just parts and tools.
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“The skills that go into restoring these cars to what they were when they were first created are getting lost,” said Amanda Gutierrez, vice president of the restoration program. That said, there’s no shortage of interest in the program: “We had this year about 160 student applications that we looked at for 60 spots,” said Gutierrez.
The coursework is a mix of classroom and hands-on learning that incorporates both how things were done originally and new techniques and methods to faithfully reproduce the results of old-school work. When not in the classroom, many of the students find themselves at “The Sheds,” a set of rental units across from campus, working on project cars of their own.
What is learned and practiced in those storage units can be just as important as the classroom. I would know, as that’s where I spent my hours when I was a student at the program over a decade ago. With the variety of students and their interests, working on projects with friends was a fast track to seeing and having hands-on experience with a surprising amount of different makes and models, along with the unique problems and solutions that come with them. Add in a heavy dose of kind midwestern attitude and suddenly it feels as though there is a little chunk of Kansas locked in a different time.
It’s a program unlike any other, and even with stories like the CBS Sunday Morning spreading the reach of the good work McPherson is doing, there is nothing quite like seeing the campus and meeting the students in person. For that, the annual student-run car show is hard to beat. This year is the 25th event and will take place on May 3, 2025. Registration closes April 23rd. I’ll be in attendance—hope to see you there.
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Very cool story. I have only heard great things about this program.
Wish this was around and known in 1974 when I was college shopping, I would have jumped at it!
Same here, there are so many aspects of the restoration field that a person could specialize in or participate as a generalist. Since nothing like this was available at my university, I ended up in mechanical engineering.
Very nice video on the school and the program. Very nice to see!
I watched that on Sunday morning, I was glad to see it