Engineering recruitment officer Jason Tyszka says the school gets mileage from its branded car. Photo by Rebecca Kendall
It’s a hot car, flames and all. Jason Tyszka, recruitment officer for the School of Engineering, loves the reaction when he arrives for a recruiting visit driving the school’s specially branded Toyota Yaris.
“You get smiles and laughs and people pointing at the vehicle,” he says.
No wonder. It’s hard to miss the crimson four-seater with the stylized flames emblazoned on both sides beneath bold white lettering — GuelphEngineering.com — running from rear to front wheels. Also prominent is the U of G identifier, located directly over the school’s three-word tagline — “Design, Create, Solve” — curving above the rear wheel wells.
Tyszka says it’s hard to measure how the billboard on wheels is paying off in student applications or enrolment numbers. But the marketing expert says the vehicle draws eyeballs and provides a talking point for the University of Guelph whenever it pulls into a school parking lot or shows up at a recruitment event on campus or off.
Last year, he or liaison officer Andrea Woon-Fat drove the vehicle to about 75 high schools in Ontario. They’ve logged just over 26,000 kilometres and have gone as far as Windsor, Belleville and Peterborough. They display the car at events such as the Ontario Universities’ Fair, graduate gatherings and School of Engineering Sundays. The school’s director has also used it to attend meetings off campus.
“It’s a great way of bringing engineering into the classroom,” says Tyszka. They load up the hatchback with recruitment materials and pull into high schools primed to talk about the engineering profession and, specifically, about Guelph’s academic programs and design theme.
The school leases the four-cylinder car for about as much as it formerly cost to rent vehicles for day trips around the province. Billed as a low-emission, fuel-efficient vehicle, the Yaris averages 34 km per litre in the city, 40 on the highway.
U of G students — typically males — routinely ask to take it for a spin. “A lot of guys think it’s entertaining to see a car with fire on it,” says Tyszka.
If pressed, he can always divert them to another vehicle, also bright red but without the flames: the Formula SAE race car maintained by the Gryphon Racing Club.