Hallo Tom and Ray. I change oils at a dealership and go to school for Automotive degree. I would probably like working as a tech, but it?s not my dream. My dream job is to be a test-driver: driving different and/or new cars, put them in tests what they can and can?t do (probably a dream of every other boy). Two problems: I cannot find a job like that, and those couple that I found don?t pay enough to sustain a life. I know there are a lot in California, but I live on the other side of US with my family of 18 members. (If it is a plus, I got pretty good photography skills.) Please help to reach my dream.
I don’t think Tom and Ray read these forums.
The best way to get a dream job is to go to college. The kind of person who will be hired for this kind of job would probably be some kind of engineer or scientist, not just a test-driver. This is the way for all sought after careers. You can’t just be good at what you do, you also have to be good at communicating with others. That is why a designer who can’t draw or an architect who can’t build models is pretty much useless. Those drawings and models are their methods of communicating their ideas to their bosses and their customers. Likewise, you will need to be able to communicate with mechanical engineers and automotive engineers, and you won’t be able to speak to them in their “language” unless you get a college education in a related scientific field.
Maybe you should contact Consumer Reports and the editors of Car and Driver to find out where their test drivers got their educations. A lot of them are magazine editors, so a degree in journalism might be a possible path.
I agree with Whitey. The car manufacturers all have test drivers, and they are engineers. One place on the East Coast is Motor Week in Baltimore, MD. Go to PBS.org and look for them. Write them an email like this one and ask them how to plan for your dream job. I’m sure they will be glad to help.
Go back to school and work on your writing and English skills. Eighteen family members? Well, I won’t go there for fear of being banned from Car Talk.
Twotone