Earning the title of Automotive Service Excellence World Class Technician is no small accomplishment. To be recognized as ASE World Class, these individuals have obtained ASE certification in 22 specialty areas: A1-A8 (automotive), T1-T8 (medium/heavy truck), B2-B5 (collision repair), and L1-L2 (advanced).

Not only is achieving certification in these areas impressive, but becoming ASE World Class is no small feat. As of 2026, a few more than 2,000 technicians have achieved this status.

In this Q&A, Motor Age sat down with Chris Lutzweiler—an ASE World Class technician and director of customer training at Noregon Vehicle Data Systems in Greensboro, North Carolina—to learn more about his journey in the automotive industry and how earning World Class status has advanced his career.

Motor Age: Please introduce yourself and tell us about your experience in the automotive industry.

Lutzweiler: I’ve been in the automotive industry since I was 18 years old. At 18, I started working at a local Ford dealership through its college sponsorship program. That was 24 years ago now, which I suppose means I’m officially getting old. I achieved World Class status three years ago in 2023.

Like many of us in this industry, I’ve had the opportunity to work on just about everything—from weed eaters to Class 8 tractors and pretty much everything in between.

Somehow, despite all of those years and all of those machines, I’ve always managed to gravitate toward drivability and electrical diagnostics. As if life wasn’t difficult enough already.

A few years ago, an unfortunate injury in the shop forced me to step away from turning a wrench on a daily basis. Fortunately, I was able to find two employers who not only valued my hands-on experience but also allowed me to use that experience to help others.

I’ve been with Noregon Vehicle Data Systems for nearly nine years now, and this role has allowed me to remain closely connected to the shop environment while continuing to develop and apply the skills I built as a technician. It has also allowed me to stay sharp in an industry where vehicle systems, technology, and diagnostic strategies are constantly evolving.

Motor Age: What's the most memorable repair you've ever completed?   

Lutzweiler: Unfortunately, it involved a garbage truck in a rural part of Canada. I generally try to avoid trash trucks; however, this one had created a major drivability nightmare for a customer, and they needed help.

The truck would start and run normally for approximately three to five minutes before shutting down. Once it shut off, it would not restart for about an hour. Then it would start again, only to repeat the same cycle. It had been doing this for nearly four weeks.

After connecting to the DLC and pulling fault codes, I noticed a common denominator: Virtually every module on the truck was reporting J1939 network communication faults. I interviewed the shop technicians, and they told me they had already replaced essentially every module connected to the J1939 network.

They had even gone a step further and replaced components on some of the proprietary networks, including the VGT actuator and NOx sensors. I asked whether they had actually tested the CAN network itself. They hadn't.

After borrowing a DVOM and checking the resistance across CAN High and CAN Low, I found that it was significantly out of specification. Since nearly every component connected to the J1939 network had already been replaced, I began to suspect that the problem wasn't with the individual modules at all—it was with the network connecting them.

After tilting the cab, I noticed that the main harness from the cab passed through a large connector located directly behind the driver's front wheel. To make matters worse, the driver's front fender skirt was mostly missing and badly mangled, leaving that connector exposed to everything the road could throw at it.

Sure enough, when I disconnected the main cab connector, I found a significant amount of corrosion on the pins inside. We cleaned the connector, applied dielectric grease, and reconnected everything. When we checked the J1939 network again, the resistance was back within specification, and the communication fault codes went inactive.

The truck ran perfectly after that. In fact, we had to get permission from the city to test-drive it because they were so tired of paying the tow bills that they were understandably reluctant to let anyone put the truck back on the road.

What made this repair particularly memorable wasn't just finding the problem—it was recognizing how something as simple as communication concerns can cause real-world drivability symptoms.

Motor Age: Tell us one thing about you that we can't guess from your certifications.

Lutzweiler: I build—or at least I like to think I build—industrial-style furniture using machinery and components from the turn of the century. Surprisingly, there is a strong connection between that hobby and my career in the automotive industry.

Working with machinery that is sometimes well over 100 years old has given me a tremendous appreciation for the machine-shop skills and mechanical ingenuity required to repair, recreate, and fabricate parts that may no longer exist.

Beyond simply repairing components, the process often involves custom fabrication, welding, machining, and even metal casting—skills that, in many cases, have become something of a lost art in modern automotive and heavy-truck environments.

Although my primary role no longer consists of actively turning a wrench every day, those experiences have been invaluable in keeping me connected to the mechanical side of the industry.

Motor Age: What automotive technology trend are you most excited about/ most concerned about?     

Lutzweiler: I’m fascinated by the development of ADAS and collision-mitigation technology. Systems such as emergency braking, cross-traffic detection, lane-departure warnings, and automatic parallel parking are incredible examples of how technology can make vehicles safer and, in some cases, make the driver’s job a little easier.

I have no problem embracing those technologies. My biggest concern, however, is the eventual move toward fully autonomous vehicles. There is a significant difference between technology that assists a driver and technology that assumes complete responsibility for operating the vehicle.

As someone who has spent my career diagnosing mechanical, electrical, and communication systems, the idea of removing the human element entirely is something I find a little alarming. We don’t do it with planes, so why are we doing it with 80,000 pounds moving down the highway at 70 mph?

As for electric vehicles, I think they are practical for some consumers but certainly not for everyone. They absolutely have a place in the market, and I do not doubt that battery technology, longevity, charging infrastructure, and overall quality will continue to improve.

 In the short term, however, I believe we will see significantly more hybrid implementation before we see a wholesale transition to fully electric vehicles. Hybrids offer the OEs a good middle-ground platform until the full EV technology can catch up.

I’m also concerned about the increasingly stringent emissions standards being applied to diesel applications, particularly in Class 6, 7 and 8 vehicles.

The technology required to meet these standards continues to become more complex, and that complexity has a very real impact on the technicians, fleets and customers who have to diagnose, maintain and operate these vehicles. I’m certainly not opposed to cleaner emissions, but at what cost?

Motor Age: How has ASE certification helped advance your career?

Lutzweiler: ASE certifications have obviously helped me from a résumé standpoint, but I think their biggest benefit has been the credibility they provide with certain customers.

For customers who place a strong emphasis on ASE certifications, there is an instant level of credibility that exists from the moment you walk through the door. I certainly don't walk into a customer’s facility advertising how many certifications I have, but when a customer recognizes the significance of ASE certifications, it establishes a level of confidence in my experience and knowledge—particularly when working with their technicians.

More importantly, ASE certifications have changed the way I approach diagnostics, and that comes through in my work with customers almost every week. Not necessarily because I’m approaching every problem as if I’m taking an ASE test, but because the testing process taught me to think differently about a problem.

When I’m working with technicians, I often ask them to explain the rationale behind an answer or a diagnostic decision. I’m less interested in simply knowing what they think the answer is and more interested in understanding why they think it is the answer. ASE questions often force you to compartmentalize different systems and components and determine how they can—or cannot—affect one another.

That thought process is extremely valuable in real-world diagnostics. It allows you to narrow down what is actually a probable failure and, just as importantly, recognize what absolutely cannot be the cause because the systems or components simply aren't connected in a way that would produce the symptom. In that sense, the greatest value of ASE certifications hasn't necessarily been the knowledge required to pass the tests; it's the diagnostic thought process that those tests helped develop—and that's something I use and share with other technicians nearly every week.