It is 1982 and Kelly is a high school senior, or will be when the next school year starts. She is also on tract to be the class valedictorian when the time comes; but for now she is finishing up an automotive shop class as the token female in it. While she is crushing on another boy in the class Kelly has no idea that her auto shop teacher is interested in her in other ways. One assignment that the auto shop teacher gives his students is to list all of their auto repair works for the summer. Three friends go together to rebuild a car from a junk yard in the summer and make it extra special (a fuel system that took twenty years to actually make it to market); however in doing so the shop teacher finds Kelly amongst the grease and oil working alongside her friends. He sees in her the mind of an engineer that his real job needs. Edwin LeBlanc works for a military vehicle production company which is in the process of producing civilian automobile system to be marketed to the main auto manufacturers. In his garage is a "test mule" that has systems in it that in reality have only come on the market some thirty years after the story was written. Love ensues between student and teacher in a hidden form and always in a way that is not what it seems. Of course this is a fairy tale with a happy ending. The next generation of automotive genius appears in the follow up book, "Shannon's Excitement." It also is years ahead of where the automotive world is right now; but they're getting there.