One of our favorite things about May in the Motor City is Mark and Laura Stielow’s annual Spring Car Party. Great friends and great cars: What could be better? Here’s a look at this past weekend’s event.
If you read the car magazines, from Hot Rod to Car and Driver, you know all about Mark Stielow. A General Motors engineer by profession, Mark is also the builder of a whole series of Pro Touring-style Camaros that run even better than they look, with supercharged LS V8 power, fully sorted suspensions, and show-quality paintwork. Driving his ’67 Camaro known as Mayhem, Mark won the 2012 Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational in Las Vegas—just one of countless accolades his Camaros have collected.
Each spring, Mark and his wife Laura host a car party. It’s like a lawn party or a pool party, but hey, this is the Motor City. So the guests—who include many of the Detroit auto industry’s best and brightest—bring their vehicles and the gathering becomes an informal car show. (Read about last year’s party here.)
The Stielows recently moved into a beautiful new home in Milford, a little farther out in the suburbs, with a larger garage out back and more room in the driveway for bigger and better car parties. Here’s just a little bit of what we saw at the most recent event this past weekend:
+ TV’s Kevin Byrd, host of Two Guys Garage, brought his pretty 1990 E30 BMW M3 Coupe, which happens to have a surprise under the hood: a 500 hp LS3 Corvette V8.
+ Cory Taulbert’s gorgeous black 1940 Ford Tudor, which is powered by what one listener described as “one pissed-off Ford Flathead V8.” For a young guy, Cory sure has a great eye for period-perfect vintage hot rods.
+ GM engineer Gordon Rojewski’s amazing ’67 Camaro barn find, which he is reconstructing from the inside out as a full-house Pro Touring machine—but with its full exterior patina intact, including the well-weathered paint.
+ Mark’s latest world-beater Camaro, which is still under construction but promises to be his most impressive build yet. They always are: Each Camaro is more incredible than the last.
You’ll find all these great machines and more in the gallery below.
Cool cars but more importantly, it looks like a young crowd compared to a lot of car events. That’s a very good sign for our hobby.
Hi Myron, that’s a great observation. We’ve discussed this to great lengths on another popular site, and it shows young people are fed up up with the drek that’s coming out of car makers today, and discovering what beautiful cars were made years ago. Personally, I’m a purist, and am not crazy about a 900 hp motor, which I think is silly in this day and age, but applaud the fact, they restored a beautiful car like the ’72 Chevelle. There’s hope yet.
Guests at the Spring Car Party are mostly car industry people.