The Pinole Valley High School Car Club is a low-profile group. There are only eight people in the club, it just started this year, and we don’t have any field trips.

Our first event came around last week when the club’s president asked his family to bring in a couple of classic American cars. The cars that came were a beautifully kept and all-original 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass SX and a 700-horsepower, drag strip-ready 1969 Plymouth GTX. When the cars rolled up to the school, I thought the sound was coming from a jet or helicopter in the sky, but it really was four thousand pounds of pure American muscle rumbling into the school. We looked at the barely-legal street slicks and NOS setup of the GTX to see how cars like this are set up.

Compared to our usual club sessions which are just us drawing on the whiteboard and talking about cars, this was a great experience, being able to see the systems and designs that we talk about every week put to use in a real car. Hopefully, in the future we can have more cars with different technologies that the club can learn about to expand our knowledge.