While you're enthused about getting into automotive engineering now, I would caution you not to specialize your mechanical engineering education in strictly automative engineering. I say that because sometime down the road, you may decide that automotive engineering is not what you want for a livelong career, or that you want the option to live in places other than the Detroit area. Although there is certainly nothing wrong with taking several automative engineering electives, I would still try to keep a rounded Mechanical Engineering education. Many of us have switched careers over the years, to engineering disciplines completely different than we originally planned while in college or our first jobs out of college.
When I was in college, I tended to take most of my electives in Environmental Engineering, which at the time was mostly HVAC related. After three years in that field, I ended up in the electric utility industry, then 15 years later, ended up in water and wastewater engineering, a LONG was from my original intended career.
