Discuss scope, budget and goals with your team. Your team should consist of six to twelve adolescents interested in car mechanics, and a minimum of two adult supervisors with vehicle maintenance experience. Together, you will determine who within the group has materials to offer, how the finished car will be used and how much each participating family is willing to pay toward car parts.
Contact members in the team. Check with other families to find resources such as tools that can be borrowed, a wrecked or non-functioning car that can be donated to the group and references to local scrap yards that provide discounts and deals on parts for older vehicles. The types of parts needed will depend on the car model used for the body.
Set a schedule and give each member of the team a chance to look and participate in each stage of the car building. While connecting doors or attaching headlights may be a simple matter for most students, make certain to review how the complex systems in a car function and ensure that everyone is up to speed before moving onto the more difficult and dangerous aspects of car building (e.g. the engine). Encourage those with greater knowledge of cars to tutor and assist those with less experience.
Start by assembling or repairing the body until it is useable. Move on to electrical systems and the engine. Test the function of the parts as a whole at each stage. For example, ensure that the doors open and close, the seats slide and move back and forth with ease but stop when the latch is released and the brakes stop the car when pressure is applied. If mistakes are made, it is better to have your team fix them immediately while still in a secure environment before testing the car on the road.
Finish with detailing and celebrate your hard work. Once your hard work has resulted in a team-built car that runs and has been painted and detailed in a way that reflects your team's choices, it is time to honor each of them with a party. Depending on your original goal for the car, it is time to donate it to a charity, raffle it off to raise funds, or give it to one of the members that needs it most (e.g. the adolescent who just received a license).