Internship propels student toward career in race-car design
A shared passion for cycling leads to friendship, hands-on experience and opportunities at Denver’s Z Cycle.
When Marco Antonacci first met Daniel Spicher in a Bicycle Design and Fabrication course at Metropolitan State University of Denver, he didn’t expect they would become close friends — or that he would eventually end up working in Spicher’s bike shop.
Spicher graduated last spring with a degree in Industrial Design. He previously worked in the outdoor industry, primarily skiing, before becoming a mechanic at Z Cycle about three years ago. It sparked a lasting zeal for the bike industry.
“Biking has been a long passion of mine, and I’m happy to be working here,” Spicher said. He hopes to begin designing bikes soon, and with the help of Antonacci’s internship project, that goal may become a reality sooner than expected.
Antonacci, a senior Advanced Manufacturing Science major with a Mechanical Engineering Technology concentration, is building a custom bike-frame jig for Z Cycle as part of his capstone project. He’s the only MSU Denver student working at the shop, but Spicher said he hopes more students will get involved as interest grows.
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Spicher became a co-owner of Z Cycle during his final semester at MSU Denver, marking the beginning of a new chapter in his career.
“When Daniel took co-ownership of Z Cycle, they wanted to integrate students into the shop and create a pathway to the industry,” Antonacci said. Z Cycle also offers internship opportunities for high school students, thanks to its other co-owners, who are high school teachers.
“We usually have two or three high school students in the shop learning how everything works,” Spicher said.
Antonacci’s love for cycling inspired a major life change in 2018, when he moved from Florida to Colorado. He had started college years earlier but put his education on hold.
“I was young when I started,” he said. “I decided to take a break. I thought it wasn’t quite the thing I wanted to do, and I was pulled away.”
He later earned a computer numeric control Manufacturing certificate from Community College of Denver and worked for several high-tech manufacturers before deciding to return to school.
“I realized what I really wanted to do was become a manufacturing engineer,” he said. “That meant going back to school, and three years later, I enrolled at MSU Denver to continue my long career path in engineering.”
Now, Antonacci is juggling two jobs at local bike shops while finishing his senior project.
“I’m finishing up my time at MSU Denver in a pretty fun, creative and challenging way,” he said.
After graduation, he plans to pursue his dream of working in the auto-racing industry. He’s already accepted a job offer from a manufacturing company in Indiana.
“My goal is to work on race cars, to design race cars,” Antonacci said, “and I’m chasing after it.”
Learn more about Industrial Design programs at MSU Denver.
