Students Swayd Gomes and Robert Rivera of King Kekaulike High School on Maui finished in the top 15 at the 2012 Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills Hands-On Competition national finals on Tuesday.

The pair finished 14th out of 50 teams from across the country in a timed match at Ford Motor Co.’s headquarters in Dearborn, Mich.

Gomes and Rivera took 81 minutes and 46 seconds to repair their deliberately bugged 1.6-liter, I-4 engine Ford Fiesta.

"The students did an awesome job … and represented their home state wonderfully," Diane Peterson, AAA Hawaii regional manager, said in a statement. "This is a great accomplishment at the national level for them."

The winning team, from Kansas, finished in 37 minutes and 21 seconds and was among six teams that turned in cars in which all malfunctions had been repaired. Other top finishers were from Michigan, Illinois, Utah and Oklahoma.

More than 12,000 high school juniors and seniors competed in this year’s event, which offered $12 million in scholarships.

The competition is aimed at students seeking careers in the automotive repair industry, in which the U.S. Labor Department reports increased demand.

Coached by auto technology instructor Peter Kovacic, Gomes and Rivera won the Hawaii competition in May with the highest score among 10 teams at Leeward Community College.

The students won scholarships and prizes for their first-place state-level victory.