‘The apprentice whose work car is a Porsche’ – Fairfield Advance, Sydney

At home Alex is helping dad fix up a VK Holden

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Tinkering in the garage with his dad has led to working on luxury cars for one lucky apprentice mechanic.

Alex Perri has always watched his dad work on old Holdens and Fords, but when he was in high school, he did not know if he wanted to be a mechanic. So he did a TVET course through TAFE as a school subject to find out.

“With TVET, for two years you go half a day a week and it covers subjects you would do as a first-year apprentice in TAFE,” Mr Perri said.

“Because I did that, it counted for my results for half a year. It counted as a school subject for HSC as well. From there, Nathan from WPC Group gave our class a talk and said there was an opportunity to work at Porsche. I called him up and asked about it and ended up going through with it.” The 19-year-old said he started working as an apprentice at Porsche in Alexandria straight out of school and had combined it with his continuing TAFE studies.

“I’ve got to do three years at TAFE one day a week and then another year working to finish the apprenticeship,” the Hammondville resident said.

“At Porsche, I’m doing servicing and little repairs for now and helping out people.

“Because I work on a lot of new stuff, TAFE teaches you the old way of doing things and old technology. You might get an old car in, so you can sort of know the different systems.” Mr Perri said he was nervous driving the luxury cars around at first.

“They’re not cheap cars they start at $100,000 and can be up to $600,000,” he said.

“My friends see all the pictures of all these cars and they’re pretty jealous.” Mr Perri is still working with his dad, doing up a VK 1984 Holden Commodore.

Caption Text:
Alex Perri studies mechanics at TAFE and works at a Porsche dealership. Picture: John Appleyard