One of our lead designers at the company I work at is an Art Center grad. He says that companies like GM and Boeing come and scout students in their junior and senior year (sort of like NFL scouting in college football) and offer jobs based on their student work. I think there’s so few automotive designer positions advertised because the companies just go to Art Center and fill the positions before they even see the light of day. That was back in the late 90s/early 2000s so things may be different now.
You have a much, much better chance of getting an automotive design job out of Art Center than most other places in the US, but it’s not like you can’t get into the industry at all if you go somewhere you can more easily afford. I work in the aviation design industry and I went to a state school, so it’s not entirely impossible to break into transportation from elsewhere.