DUBLIN — Alas, the Ramblin’ Wreck will not experience life as an import. Georgia Tech’s iconic mechanical mascot will not have the chance to attempt driving on the wrong side of the street.
The Wreck (Tech’s Reck Club, the student spirit group that is the car’s custodian, prefers “Reck”) did not make the trip this week with the Yellow Jackets football team to Dublin for its season opener against Florida State in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic (noon Saturday, ESPN). It was not, though, for a lack of trying.
“We did give it a go,” Tech senior Matthew Kistner, who holds the honor of serving as the Wreck’s driver for the year, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution by phone. “We weren’t able to make it happen, unfortunately.”
Starting with athletic director J Batt at the time the game was made official in March 2023 to a last-gasp effort made by Kistner in recent days, Tech tried to find a way to get the Wreck to Ireland. Logistics and cost proved formidable obstacles.
The initial idea was to ship the Wreck on a freighter across the Atlantic. However, not only was the cost exorbitant, but it likely would have taken three weeks to transport by sea and three weeks back, Kistner said. Both the cost – Kistner said that he was not told the figure by the athletic department, but “I was just made aware that it was way too much” – and the shipping time made it a no-go.
After facing Florida State on Saturday, the Jackets play home games Aug. 31 (Georgia State) and Sept. 14 (VMI). Had Tech elected to ship the Wreck, that would have meant that it probably would be somewhere on the Atlantic in a crate for both of those games instead of leading the team onto the field at Bobby Dodd Stadium. The Wreck has fulfilled that obligation for every Tech home game on campus since its 1961 debut.
“It was like, ‘Well, are we going to sacrifice that for Dublin?’” Kistner said. “And that became a very obvious ‘No’ for a lot of people.”
A potential workaround came from the alumni association, which has a replica Wreck. It was considered that the association could send its car to Ireland, but, again, cost remained an unscalable wall. Plus, it wouldn’t have been the same to use an ersatz Wreck.
Rather than have it out of pocket for six weeks, the athletic department also considered sending the Wreck on a cargo plane, but the price tag was, again, excessive.
“This is what I know about prices,” said Kistner, a computer-science major from Florence, South Carolina. “Most people have been saying is that it would be cheaper for you to just buy a car over there and design it (than ship it).”
Credit: Chase Goulet
Credit: Chase Goulet
Finally, Kistner said that campus contacts told him that they could use their Air Force connections to airlift the Wreck via government transport.
“And the conversation happened (last week),” Kistner said. “It was a ‘No,’ but we tried.”
Kistner, who serves as the car’s driver for the calendar year, said “it was a little heartbreaking” to realize that it wouldn’t happen for his car. He was elected driver on a platform that included taking the car to away football games more often than it has in recent years, and this would have been an all-time voyage. The Wreck hasn’t traveled out of the continental U.S. (If you’re wondering, the farthest north it has been is Ann Arbor, Michigan. South: Miami. East: Philadelphia. West: El Paso, Texas.)
The Wreck is not the only school icon that won’t make it to Dublin. Renegade and Osceola, the horse and rider pair that serve as official symbols of Florida State, also were left stateside.
Still, Kistner holds excitement for the rest of the season. He has plans to take it north via trailer for the Syracuse game Sept. 7, then to Louisville for Sept. 21 and North Carolina for Oct. 12. The Syracuse trip would become the Wreck’s most northerly destination.
In his time in office, he has tried to make the car accessible to as many Jackets teams (even non-varsity clubs) and student groups as possible.
He said that he has sought to bring awareness to students that the Wreck “is their mascot. What’s kind of a big thing that gets forgotten often is that the Wreck is here for the student body, and the entire purpose of it is to be the student body’s mascot itself.”
Earlier this year, he transported it to Savannah on behalf of Tech’s ice hockey club, daring even to drive it onto the ice.
“It was a little nerve-wracking,” he said. “I was scared. You can imagine my heart was beating a little bit.”
Tips for driving the Wreck on ice: Press the accelerator before going onto the rink and then don’t hit it again while on the ice.
“You push that gas – ooh, you’re going to go and you’ll go fast,” Kistner said.
Going onto the ice before it’s been resurfaced rather than after also is wise. It was, perhaps, a literal learning curve.
Fulfilling a pledge in his election campaign to Reck Club members, Kistner also has ventured off campus with the car, using it as public relations as part of the institute and athletic department’s objectives to stamp the school and its teams as part of Atlanta. He takes the car around Centennial Park, Atlantic Station, Buckhead and, sometimes, the Taco Bell drive-through on Ponce de Leon Avenue.
“I like to eat,” Kistner said.
He also drove it in the city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade as part of the athletic department’s entry.
At Atlantic Station, “people tend to get really excited about because they’ll be out eating and they’ll see me or they’ll be going to a movie and they’ll see the car, and that’s just really exciting,” Kistner said.
His term will come to a close in December, when he is scheduled to graduate. He is applying for jobs in data science and analytics and will weigh offers against pursuing a master’s degree in analytics. Kistner would be most open to a job in sports analytics, as he is a sports fan. He actually was an award-winning sports writer for the Technique, Tech’s student paper – further proof of the brain power common in that field.
“That’s, like, the dream,” he said, most certainly referring to a job in sports analytics, not sports writing.
Dublin will elude the Wreck. But further adventures await. Saturday, Kistner and his trusty 1930 Ford Model A Sport Coupe will be at a watch party at New Realm Brewing along the Atlanta Beltline. The hope is to take it for a spin on the path.
If it can’t claim new territory in Ireland, the Wreck can at least do so back home.
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