(TNS) — A deep interest in luxury sports cars and the mechanisms that make them roar led Dylan Serrano to pursue a career as an automotive technician. “I think I fell in love with being a problem solver,” he said. “With a car, it’s just a bunch of problems and then I just love solving it and figuring it all out.
” Serrano, a 19-year-old student at Osceola Technical College, was one of 20 teenagers who tested their automotive technician skills this week at the Central Florida International Auto Show. As part of an annual student competition, students identified and fixed mechanical issues in the 2025 models of about a dozen vehicles, including a Ford Bronco and a Dodge Charger. It was a chance for the students to earn scholarship money — and for the industry to find workers and to highlight the national shortage of automotive technicians.
“With the tech competition, what we’re doing is identifying talent because we’ve got a nationwide shortage of over 70,000 techs,” said Evelyn Cardenas, the auto show director. The students involved in Thursday’s event at the Orange County Convention Center were the top scorers in a two-hour written exam designed to trim the field of prospective technicians. During the timed competition, students moved among 21 stations, testing their knowledge of each vehicle by completing diagnostic checks, pulling data out of the vehicles and locating electrical system faults.
Serrano said the competition, for him, was mostly about pu.