The 55-year-old Porsche sitting in a Harrisonburg shop looks like it just came off the assembly line. Owned by Shannon and Katherine Kennedy of Charlottesville and restored by JMU students interning at a unique nonprofit, the car earned a best-in-class finish in July at the Porsche Club of America’s premier event, the 64th Annual Porsche Parade in Boca Raton, Florida.

Now, the students at Madison Automotive Apprentices will work to make it roadworthy.

“You can have a show car or you can have a road car, but not both,” said Cole Scrogham ('90, '16M), an eight-time national champion team owner with Porsche brand and the founder of MAAP.

But the real payoff for MAAP interns is the hands-on experience that prepares them to be productive employees following graduation.

MAAP, founded in 2016, is an automobile/motorsports enterprise, but the skills students learn prepare them for a variety of careers, including engineering, nonprofit management and economic development.

“After seeing what Cole has done here with the program and what it’s capable of, we just really wanted to support it as much as we wanted to build the car,” said Shannon Kennedy, who belongs to the same Porsche Club of America affiliate as Scrogham.