A legacy of three mechanical minds drives on

The legacy of a family of engineers is a unique one. The common thread of learning how things work requires more than handing down a set of wrenches — it means passing on a curiosity that motivates the need to discover new answers.

For John Thomas Bobbitt IV ‘24, his father, John Thomas Bobbitt III ‘91, and his father, John Thomas “Tom” Bobbitt ‘67, the love for mechanical engineering started with a love for cars. The past six decades have held a shared history for the family that consistently involves a motor and four wheels, from a 1956 Ford to a Lamborghini.

Tom and “the Cage”

Tom arrived for higher education in Blacksburg in 1963. His father was self-educated in many things electrical and mechanical, supporting the family by choosing a career in electrical power distribution systems for what is now Dominion Resources. He shared his love of learning how things worked, and why, with Tom. Following the trajectory of that inquisitive nature, Virginia Tech became a logical choice for Tom to pursue an analytical, technical education.

Tom graduated in 1967 and worked for IBM in the early days of solid state computer development, designing and equipping what are now called semiconductor foundries. He served in the Army during the Vietnam era as a mechanical engineer, then came back to work in sales and systems engineering, finance, and general management.

During Tom’s college days, large competition automotive teams were not yet a part of student life. Instead of working on a team, Tom worked on his own car in “the Cage,” a fenced parking lot still used by students. There was no garage, just a piece of cardboard he put on to keep the gravel of the lot from digging into his back while working on his Ford.

“My hobby was cars,” Tom said. “I developed them, maintained them, and raced them on an amateur level for many years.”  

Tom’s car hobby rubbed off on his son, who followed in his dad’s footsteps, arriving on campus just as new opportunities for students were coming to life.

From gravel lots to design teams

John Thomas Bobbitt III, who goes by John, followed in his dad’s footsteps and came to Virginia Tech in 1987.

“Growing up with my dad, I was always in the garage and working on things around the house. When it came time to look for college, mechanical engineering seemed a natural fit,” said John.

John’s list of college options mostly had student teams that were part of a new intercollegiate miniature car competition that was channeled through the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). Called Formula SAE, it challenged students to both design and build a car, which he very much wanted to do.

John enrolled at Virginia Tech even though he could find no Formula team on campus, thinking that the Blacksburg education would still be the best for his interests. Luckily, in the summer after his first year, an article in a national magazine provided some good news.

“Auto Week magazine ran an article about Formula SAE, and there was a sidebar about Virginia Tech’s team,” John said. “I had no idea. I got back to campus and wandered the halls of Randolph [Hall], looking for the race car. I found the team. I walked in and asked how I could join. They handed me an angle grinder and told me I was on the team.”

From that simple membership process, John stuck with the group. It paid off. His senior year, Virginia Tech won the national Formula SAE championship.

He also kept a personal connection to racing. John had purchased a Porsche 914 while a student, and tinkering with it remained a hobby thanks to his dad’s training. After graduation, he modified it for track racing.

Post-college, John took a job with Ingersoll-Rand. After working abroad for many years, he came back to the states and moved into the Club Car division of the company. Eventually settling in Augusta, Georgia, he decided to spend his weekends in professional racing.

John’s previous experience put him right at home working with Porsche race cars, and his first job as a race engineer put him under the hood of a Porsche 911 RSR. Even when Ingersoll-Rand moved him to China, he still found his way back to the racetrack, even giving some of the company’s customers rides on racetracks.

The weekend gig eventually became a full-time job, and he spent a couple years touring as a professional race engineer. The downside was the time he spent away from home. When the race schedule became so active that he only saw his family one weekend a month, John decided to take a job with Savannah River National Lab and put touring aside.

This certainly didn’t spell the end of racing, however. John went back to spending weekends at the racetrack, working with a professional team. This time, he took a new engineer along.

Three generations in the making

The desire to take things apart, see how they worked, and put them back together was a family trait passed from Tom to John III, and it became a main feature of John Thomas Bobbitt IV’s childhood. The fourth generation Bobbitt, who also goes by John, was drawn to automotive engineering at an early age. Long before finishing his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering in 2024, he designed and built his own trailer to pull behind his bike, even before the training wheels were off.

“In second grade, I told my teacher that I wanted to be a mechanical engineer at Virginia Tech, on the Formula SAE team,” he said. “In second grade, my teacher laughed at me.”

John IV certainly proved his skill with automobiles. When his dad came back from two years on the road as a professional race engineer, John joined him on the weekends. By his sophomore year in high school, he had earned his own job on a professional team as the tire technician for MLT Motorsports. Now he’s the lead engineer for two Lamborghini Super Trofeos.

While at Virginia Tech, John IV joined the Formula SAE team his dad had been part of more than 30 years prior. When he walked into the bay at the Ware Lab for the first time, it was already familiar. His dad has mentored the team as an alumni advisor for the past 20 years.

“I love to see the ideas they come up with. There’s a lot of creativity,” his dad said. “I learned early on with John not to question him too much. He had some ideas I thought were crazy, and he always seemed to find a way to make them work. It taught me to stand back, let them do their thing, and add context to what they’re doing,”

The journeys of these three Hokies have carried them down racetracks, around the world, and back to Blacksburg many times. A curiosity for seeing how things work, passed on from Tom to John III and then John IV, has given them the fuel for that journey.

“My education helped me in fields broader than mechanical engineering,” Tom said. “I always appreciated that. Both my son and grandson have a close affinity, I think, because of that common mindset. It’s not just about a set of equations. It’s about how you make tradeoffs and decisions.”