By: Maria Allard | C&G Newspapers | Published June 1, 2026
METRO DETROIT — Stan Yee was built for speed.
He brought excitement to those who drove in the fast lane.
For many decades dating back to the 1950s, Yee was a significant part of race car driving locally and nationwide. The track was his second home.
Although he wasn’t a race car driver running laps, he was in demand as a race car builder. Spectators could always spot the racers he built because they all sported the No. 33 while crossing the finish line. Yee passed away in 2008, two days before his 76th birthday.
“He would race them for two to three years and then build a new design,” his son, Stan Yee Jr., said. “He was a builder. He was a nondegree engineer guy. He’d do all this geometry. He literally innovated the sport of how some things advanced. He got his handprints all over the sport. He was just a really smart guy who was self-taught.”
The oval track car owner pretty much got his start with drag racer Connie Kalitta.
“Connie grew up around here and they were friends,” said Yee Jr., of Clinton Township. “My dad helped Connie build his first dragster out of high school. And then he started getting bigger and bigger, and then my dad traveled around the country with him.
“The Motor City Speedway had a dirt track. My dad started hanging out there and met some people and started helping them out,” Yee Jr. said. “Then he went to Mount Clemens Race Track and then he went all over the country. He raced at all the biggest races in the country, all the way from Canada to just outside of Daytona Beach. From there to there and everywhere in between. One of the biggest races on dirt was the World 100.”
Yee built cars for drivers Danny Byrd, Junior Hanley, John Anderson, Harold Cook, Artie Sommers, Chuck Roumell, Steve Lee, Joy Fair and Joe Ruttman.
“My dad could build anything by hand. He was one of the first two, three guys that started hand-making frames and things for racing chassis,” Yee Jr. said. “In the beginning, you basically got an old frame usually off a Chevelle and then it turned into Camaros. You kind of change the suspension, change the parts. Before you would just pull a car out of a junkyard and race them.”
Custom-made
Yee’s parents emigrated from China.
“Friends and family were able to set them up upstairs at a hand laundry in Detroit,” Yee Jr. said.
Yee’s father got a job in a factory, and the family saved enough money to purchase a piece of land in Roseville.
“They built a really small one-bedroom bungalow with five kids,” Yee Jr. said. “It was an acre of land, and Grandma had a Quonset hut and she would grow vegetables.”
By the time Yee was attending Roseville High School, he befriended “this older guy” at a local auto body shop and watched him work.
“He talked Grandma into taking over the Quonset hut, and he started customizing cars,” Yee Jr. said. “He went to Wolverine Trade School and learned how to weld.”
One piece of equipment that Yee put his own spin on was the spindle.
“He made his own spindles back in the 1950s,” Yee Jr. said. “You get that spindle up for how far you want that tire to move.”
Yee also custom-made bubble skirts, a decorative piece that covers the rear wheel wells.
“So many people wanted them,” Yee Jr. said. “This was 1956, ’55, ’57. He would sell them for $200. For three years straight he would take a $20 deposit. He said at any given time he always had $2,000 in deposits.”
That’s how he started his own business. In 1959, he opened Stan Yee’s Collision Inc. The current location, 16521 E. 10 Mile Road in Eastpointe, opened in 1962.
Retired C & G Newspapers advertising sales representative David Rubello knew Yee quite well from all the years Yee’s Collision Inc. advertised with him.
“I was in my 20s when I first met him. He knew I was a new salesperson and was very helpful to me, giving me advice about how to work smart,” Rubello said. “He was a very nice man and he was always so kind. He seemed to be always tinkering with a car of some sort.”
Yee Jr. now owns Stan Yee’s Collision Inc. and is also an avid race car driver. He started racing in 1992 and hasn’t put the brakes on it yet. Racing has proved quite the experience.
“In the beginning, it’s just kind of loud and controlled chaos,” he said. “When you get a little older, you get used to it.”
He cited the Toledo Speedway as having the fastest track. While he has raced at various tracks over the years, he currently prefers Flat Rock Speedway, which remembers Yee each year with its Stan Yee Memorial 150.
The front lobby of Yee’s Collision is dedicated to Yee’s contributions to racing. Photo collages decorate the walls and newspaper articles highlight his career path. In a large workroom nestled in the back of the shop, a shelf full of trophies keep the skilled builder’s memory alive.
Once, Yee built a NASCAR-sanctioned car. His fabrication work was so popular that one of his creations was exhibited at the World’s Fair in the former Yugoslavia for one year. In 1978, he won the Marty Robbins 500. On Nov. 1, 2009, Yee was inducted into the Michigan Motor Sports Hall of Fame.