Growing up.<\/h1>\n
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Mark Trostle has been in Detroit from the jump, and his story begins with his parents, Mark and Jane. In 1966, they moved from Ohio to Michigan for work; his dad started with Ford Motor Company as a designer. The next year, the elder Mark was drafted into the military and sent to Vietnam, but returned safely stateside in 1969 and picked up at Ford where he left off.<\/p>\n
After 3 years at Ford, he was lured away by Heinz Prechter to become one of the first designers at Prechter\u2019s American Sunroof Company (ASC). Prechter was known for pioneering the moonroof, but his business quickly developed into a full-on custom\/prototype\/movie car-building giant. Mark Trostle, Sr. eventually became the president of creative services, and worked there for 35 years helping to design, develop and build all sorts of cool stuff.<\/p>\n
Which means he was around cool stuff all the time. On the weekends, the younger Mark would often tag along to ASC, where his mind was drawn to one thing immediately:<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember seeing the clay models, and I put my finger…what everyone wants to do is put their fingernail into a clay model.\u201d Mark says laughing, \u201cI remember screwing up a clay model they had there.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he wasn\u2019t channeling his inner Rodin on the clay model, Mark would prepare for his career, though he didn\u2019t know it yet. \u201cI would draw. I would sit and pretend I was a car designer, sitting at the real designer\u2019s desks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll never forget that! And it was cool because Dad\u2019s designers would do demos for me and overlays of sketches. Being exposed to that, it worked perfect. Because, academically, I didn\u2019t have the engineering brain, I had the creative \u2018I want to figure something out but make it look cool\u2019 brain.\u201d<\/p>\n
He watched his dad work on cars, doing things like putting a V8 into a Vega, and also traveled with him to road races and car shows.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I didn\u2019t end up in the car business somehow, I think he would have been disappointed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course he did end up in the car business, and it was in spite of some terrible guidance from a high school counselor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll never forget going to the counselor at Plymouth Canton my junior year and they asked me what I want to do. \u2018I want to be a car designer!\u2019 They told me I didn\u2019t have the math skills for it. I told them it was drawing. They told me no, it was engineering. And they were adamant <\/em>that I didn\u2019t know what I was talking about, and that I was going down the wrong path.\u201d<\/p>\n Mark stops, smiles and continues, \u201cIt\u2019s funny, as I talk about this story, the serendipity, I had to become a car designer because my art teacher was a former clay modeler at GM. He had retired and wanted to teach art. I remember clicking with him.\u201d<\/p>\n This teacher encouraged Mark, even giving him special projects to help foster automotive design skills. This instructor also introduced him to a design competition hosted by the Detroit Autorama, a show he attended regularly with his dad. Mark entered the contest and sketched and resketched his eventual entry, spending copious amounts of time and energy on it. The effort paid off and he won, receiving $1,000 towards attending The College for Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit. Today, that would pay for a few markers, a sketch pad and a lunch at the prestigious school.<\/p>\n Besides the money, coming out on top gave Mark the confidence that he had the skill set to make car design his career. Then, while still in high school, his dad helped him slide into an Intro to Transportation class that met on Saturdays at CCS. It was taught by GM designer Pres Bruning and filled with students already attending the school. Despite being initially intimidated by the whole scene, Mark made it through the class. Then came his graduation from high school and his acceptance into CCS.<\/p>\n Mark moved to downtown Detroit, right off of Woodward, to attend school. 70 freshman started in his class, including current FCA global head of design Ralph Gilles. Competition was intense and CCS has always been known to give its students one of the more difficult workloads of any design college in the country. It didn\u2019t help matters that he had a very sociable roommate who always had friends to the room to hangout. The plus side? That\u2019s how he met his future wife Debbie, an art history major, who also just happened to be old enough to buy alcohol (he\u2019s laughing while telling me this, \u201cshe hates when I bring this up!\u201d). The downside? The newfound freedom that comes from moving out of mom and dad\u2019s house, coupled with the bonkers schedule, plus the social scene hurt his work and pushed Mark into academic probation after a performance review his first semester. The review was all it took to become a more serious student, and he went \u201cfull throttle\u201d after that.<\/p>\n That summer, his dad put him to work in ASC\u2019s paint shop, doing all the dirty jobs, like removing old paint with aircraft stripper and taking out the garbage. Well, until he misjudged the location of the trash compactor and stopped the forklift short, dumping its load all over the ground. The man who ran the place, the legendary custom car builder Mike Alexander, just happened to be walking by and he \u201ccame unglued.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the last time they had me take out the trash,\u201d says Mark.<\/p>\n Grunt work aside, just being in the atmosphere ASC provided had a lifelong influence on the type of designer he is today.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing around that, there was a fabrication shop at ASC where all this was going on, and now we do so many builds, whether it\u2019s with MetalCrafters or Prestige or Prefix, and I love that! I love being there, being in the shop and talking with people who are crafting with their hands. And part of that is growing up around that, being with my dad.<\/p>\n “Truthfully, and this might sound different than I actually mean it…the thing I love is that when I\u2019m talking to someone who is creating a prototype piece or whatever, I have people say to me I\u2019m different than other execs or whatever. I like that. To me, there\u2019s no division line or whatever, we all do what we love to do and each respect the other person\u2019s talent.\u201d<\/p>\n This type of approach will play a critical part later in Mark\u2019s life as he and his team fuse design, engineering and fabrication to push the limits of modern automotive form and function.<\/p>\n Keep checking back for the rest of Mark’s story here on DodgeGarage.com<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/mark-trostle-p1-02-614x278.jpg\")
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<\/p>\nCrazy like a fox.<\/h1>\n