Of you wanted to trace a young hot-rodder’s trip through the performance industry, thinking, “Hey, I’d like to follow in this guy’s footsteps,” Mark Stielow would be a good guy to track. For this author, the fun part of doing this interview was that it was just calling up an old friend and talking cars—except in this case, I’m talking with the director of motorsport competition for General Motors, worldwide.
Mark’s career started while still in college, with a last-minute application for an internship with GM that, because of his early automotive experience, almost immediately had him working on the 1LE program developing suspension and brake parts for the third-gen Camaro and Firebird. After graduation, he worked at GM for a few years then left for a short time to work for Gale Banks and later Summit Racing as chief engineer, where he built the QuadraDeuce, an all-wheel-drive ’32 Ford that was never completely sorted out as an autocrosser despite its tremendous promise.
After returning to GM, he has worked his way through the motorsports side since the early 2000s, helping to develop performance versions of cars like the Z28 Camaro, the Cadillac CT-5V Blackwing,
