Trackside with ONYX Automotive Technician Long Dinh
Story by Julius Fredrick // Photography by Bill Sitzmann
Blurs of motley-colored steel flash across Long Dinh’s eyes, the roar of twin-turbo engines surging into a whine as GT-class race cars muscle for position over a straightaway. Little more than four miles of track contains 14 turns, including a sharp backside junction dubbed “the kink” at Elkhart Lake’s Road America racetrack in Wisconsin—one of eight speedways to host SRO Motorgroup’s GT America Series nationally.
At the behest of BMW of North America and ONYX Automotive’s BMW of Omaha, automotive technician Long Dinh attended the event as more than a chrome-dazzled spectator; for three days in late August, he was welcomed as an honorary crew member by the BimmerWorld Racing Team.
“My manager, my shop foreman at the time, put my application in, and said ‘Okay, I’m putting you in, you want it?” Dinh recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah, let’s go!’ They picked me, and I’m one of 11 people they picked.”
The application was for BMW’s Race Crew Program, established in 2018 to reward and retain outstanding automotive technicians. It’s part of the luxury dealership’s response to a scarcity of skilled technicians, ongoing since 2012; the cost and difficulty of education required to perform the work and a generational shift away from skilled trades are oft-cited factors in the shortage.
“You’re going to have to know all the trades,” said ONYX BMW/MINI service manager, Nick Appletoft. “You have to know plumbing, you have to know electrical, you have to know construction and mechanical, and then you throw some IT in there. I think that’s why the job is so difficult.”
Still, Appletoft views the program as beneficial for all parties involved—BMW, his technicians, and especially the race teams with whom they partner.
“It’s a huge advantage for the race teams, right?” he said. “You bring in a professional who does this every day—these techs have taken apart that engine dozens of times—or they can take a look at the fault code and go ‘I know exactly what’s wrong with the car, no further diagnosis needed.’”
While Dinh was celebrated for his invaluable expertise during his stint at Road America, he was quick to return the compliment.
“The team I worked with was really professional,” he said of the BimmerWorld crew. “They took like, two weeks to test the engine before the race, and when they came to the racetrack, everything was ready. They’re trained really well.”
BimmerWorld owner and racer, James Clay, wrote Dinh a letter thanking him for his contributions, and the whole crew signed and gifted him a t-shirt to commemorate the occasion.
“I thought it would be a good opportunity for him to go,” Appletoft said. “He’s got a great work ethic. He hasn’t been with the brand for a super long time, but that work ethic is something you can’t teach. [Many technicians in the industry] feel under-appreciated, which is something we try to do differently at ONYX.”
The experience was a dream come true for Dinh, one he could hardly envision growing up and attending university in his native Vietnam before emigrating with the majority of his extended family to Wisconsin in 2012. Dinh endured a hectic schedule upon arrival: working on cars, at his family’s nail salon, and in time, on furthering his education.
“I worked for my aunt at the nail shop for two months, and every time she called my name I was like ‘Oh my…” Dinh recalled, laughing. “I’m working on the cars, but now I have to do something on a person, and that’s really scary, right?”
Shortly thereafter, a job proposition at a luxury dealership in Louisiana prompted Dinh to journey south, introducing him to the complex and fastidious world of German engineering. By 2016, his family had moved to Omaha, pleading with him to close the familial distance.
“With my culture, people live really close by—parents, brothers, sisters, you know?” he said. “We’ve got five families living [in Omaha]. My parents called me and said ‘please come back home’ because I was the only one living a far distance [away].”
Ever the loving son, he did just that, settling into yet another new city and attending classes at Metro Community College’s Automotive Tech Center. After completing his coursework, Dinh sent out a flurry of job applications, one of which landed him at ONYX automotive, where he was hired.
Today, Dinh not only enjoys the superb working conditions and cutting-edge technology that ONYX Automotive provides for their technicians, but he now also has fond memories of a once-in-a-lifetime, high-octane experience.
“My favorite part was sitting on the side of the race track, watching [the cars], feeling the breeze,” Dinh reflected. “They have radar, and everybody has one, and you can hear the whole team. You only see people race on TV, but now you’re there. I have no idea how to explain how it felt…but [when] I was on the team, I was really proud.”
Visit onyxautomotive.com for more information on the BMW brand and lifestyle.
