EAST AURORA, N.Y. — Amid the constraints of textbooks and grades, sometimes it’s hard to see the bigger picture.

But on a sunny June day at East Aurora High School, the lesson came to life — and it was Max-sized.

“Woah, look at that, buddy,” exclaimed Thomas Steele, the father of 2-year-old Max.

“He has a type of dwarfism called achondroplasia so his extremities are shorter than an average kid,” explained Max's mom Colleen Steele.

That’s why a group of five high school seniors decided to trick a car out for their engineering design and development class.

“We've been working on it since about Christmas break,” said senior Aiden Passmore.

“There's the coding part. There's the electrical,” explained Ryan Wall, the technology education teacher at East Aurora High School. “A lot of mechanical engineering went into this, building the custom seats, modifying the steering, and doing all sorts of custom modifications to accommodate the children.”

It's a pilot partnership with engineer Eric Ruth and Go Baby Go.

“When you get into engineering, there's a disconnect between some of the things you do and the impact it has on the world,” Ruth said. “This is like I put in a couple months of work, and I get to see this child sit in the car and drive around and have an impact immediately.”

Ruth started working on these cars himself.

"The first car took maybe six, seven, eight months longer than I expected,” he said.

“Maybe two inches is all we need because he could almost grab the wheel,” said Passmore, explaining some tweaks that had to be made.

But that one car means a lot, they say.

“He loves colors; he likes Paw Patrol," said Colleen. "It's got his name everywhere.”

“There's definitely not a lot of things readily available for children with his disease state," added Thomas. "So to have something adaptive like that is excellent.”

It's excellent not only for the whole Steele family, but for the students, too.

“I plan on majoring in mechanical engineering," said Passmore. "I don't really know what I want to do with that degree, but I know there's something that this correlates with."

“He's gonna love it. Our dogs are not gonna like it,” Thomas laughed and said.

As Max gets ready to put the pedal to the metal on a new adventure, he’s not the only one getting those gears turning.

“The kids who are working on it, they get a chance to see the moment that just happened there,” said Ruth, referencing Max lighting up as he saw the car. “That was the moment that it really gets you. Like, it gets me every time.”

This was only the first fitting for Max. Ruth will take over the project from here, with the help of any students who want to volunteer their time this summer. If successful, he hopes to roll this program out to other area schools.