Aerials for the region that builds cars
Metro Detroit’s automotive calendar keeps an aerial crew busy. The Detroit Auto Show returns to Huntington Place on the riverfront January 14 to 24, 2027, according to the show’s website. Each August the Woodward Dream Cruise runs through Ferndale, Royal Oak, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Pontiac and the communities between them; the 2026 cruise was August 15. In between come dealership openings, vehicle reveals, press drives and commercial shoots.
Each of those buyers needs something different. An agency needs a tracking shot that cuts cleanly with the ground unit. A dealer needs the lot, the frontage and the turn in from the main road. An event team needs arrivals, scale and a reveal. We plan the aerial work around the job the footage has to do, then around the rules.
Tracking shots and the moving-vehicle rule
The shot every automotive client asks for is the drone pacing a car down a road. It is also the shot the FAA regulates most closely.
- Flying over people in moving vehicles. Under 14 CFR 107.145, a drone may fly over a person inside a moving vehicle only if it qualifies for an operations-over-people category and either stays within a closed or restricted-access site, with everyone in the vehicles on notice, or avoids sustained flight over the vehicles.
- Flying from a vehicle. Section 107.25 bars piloting from a moving land vehicle except over a sparsely populated area, so most tracking is flown from fixed pilot positions along the route.
- Speed. Part 107 caps a small drone at 100 mph. A performance car can outrun both the rule and the aircraft, so we choreograph passes at speeds that still read as fast on camera.
In practice that means a closed course or a controlled private road, a briefed driver, rehearsed passes, a visual observer and radio calls on every run. It is slower than pointing a drone at traffic, and it is how the shot stays legal and repeatable.
Tracks, proving grounds and airspace
Closed-course permission and open airspace are separate questions. M1 Concourse in Pontiac, an 87-acre motorsports club with a 1.5-mile circuit according to its website, sits in uncontrolled airspace at the surface on FAA maps. The American Center for Mobility, a 500-acre proving ground in Ypsilanti Township, sits beside Willow Run Airport inside its Class D airspace. The FAA facility-map grids we checked across that site are set at 0 to 50 feet, so any flight needs FAA authorization, and 0-foot grids cannot be approved automatically through LAANC.
Downtown has its own limits. Huntington Place is well within three nautical miles of Ford Field, so a Lions home game closes the airspace from an hour before kickoff to an hour after the game. The same FAA restriction covers IndyCar races, including the Detroit Grand Prix on downtown streets. Our game-day guide covers the details, and the Detroit drone rules guide covers permits.
Car shows, launches and crowds
Car shows put the drone near its hardest audience: a crowd that did not sign up to be under it. Part 107 limits flying over people, and sustained flight over an open-air assembly requires a drone that meets the FAA’s category rules and Remote ID. Category 3 drones, the heavier tier cleared by declaration, cannot fly over open-air assemblies at all.
So we shoot the parts of an event that work from above without putting anyone under the aircraft: load-in, staging lots, the show field before gates open and wide angles from the edges. Launch sites need the property owner’s permission. Michigan law stops cities from writing their own rules on drone flight, but it does not give anyone the right to take off from a lot they do not control. Indoor reveals are the venue’s call, flown only with its approval and a cleared path.
Deliverables
You receive horizontal masters for web, screens and presentations, vertical cuts for Reels and TikTok, and edited stills for dealer websites and listings. For agency work, we deliver clean footage to your editor in the format requested. When a project needs a full crew on the ground as well, our video production team handles both.
Send the vehicles, the location and the date window. We will check the site, the airspace and the event calendar, and send a fixed quote. Start an automotive project.