By Nathan Inman
Each school year, graduate students in the Department of Automotive Engineering design and build concept vehicles for Deep Orange. But what happens to those vehicles after the project is completed?
That’s where The Purple Garage comes in. Founded in late 2024, The Purple Garage is a student-led automotive club based at CU-ICAR that allows students to revive previous Deep Orange vehicles.
Jack McDonald, a graduate student in automotive engineering and vice president of The Purple Garage, spoke about the organization and the work the club does.
“The Purple Garage is really centered around hands-on automotive experience,” McDonald said. “We started off just maintaining some of the Deep Orange vehicles you may see around the ICAR campus. That being Deep Orange 9, which was a Civic Rally race car, and Deep Orange 3, which was sponsored by Mazda … We started off just essentially maintaining and sort of rebuilding those cars.”
McDonald added that the club is supported by the automotive engineering department, allowing undergraduate students to see what goes into the Deep Orange projects before they potentially participate in one of their own should they choose to join the graduate program.
In addition to reviving prior Deep Orange builds, the club provides students with valuable experience in performing maintenance projects on their personal vehicles.
As far as making the decision to join The Purple Garage, McDonald said he was most intrigued by the opportunity to gain hands-on experience.
“I think there’s nothing better than just getting your hands dirty and just kind of learning,” McDonald said. “When I learned about the Purple Garage, they just essentially just get their hands dirty and work on cars. It just sounded like something I could be a part of.”
That experience, McDonald said, greatly benefits students in the automotive engineering department as they begin searching for jobs and internships.
“I think it’s really because I’m in the automotive realm that you’ll see in a lot of job applications that they prefer hands-on experience,” McDonald explained. “It’s one thing to learn these concepts in the classroom and maybe do a couple of homework assignments, but it’s another thing to actually do it in the real world on a car … having that on your resume that you’re actually applying them to real applications is extremely important. I think it’s something that a lot of schools don’t have, and we’re lucky enough that we do have it.”
With the club supported by the automotive engineering department, The Purple Garage has access to the knowledge and expertise of many individuals in the program.
“It’s been really beneficial because, at the end of the day, we’re only students, and so it’s not like we have all the knowledge in the world, but what we do have is access to a lot of people who do have that knowledge,” McDonald said. “So if we’re ever confused, or maybe need some help, like, diagnosing something, there’s always someone to talk to at the department. And they’re always willing to help, which is the biggest thing.”
While the primary focus of the club is to restore older Deep Orange vehicles, The Purple Garage undertakes other projects as well.
“We’re also building an LS engine. Dr. (Robert) Prucka had an old block, essentially, that they used just for testing. They were gonna get rid of it, and so we pretty much were like, ‘No, we’ll take it and we’ll rebuild it.’ So currently, we prepped the block and the cylinder heads and the valves. We’re just waiting on some funding to actually assemble the engine.”
As the semester winds down, McDonald said the organization hopes to acquire a vehicle to install the engine in the spring. While The Purple Garage is supported by the automotive engineering department, the club is open to students of all majors. Any student interested in joining can learn more on the organization’s website.
