If you're within a day's drive of Detroit and have a thing for cars from the 1950s and 1960s, you should make an effort to take in this year's version of the Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise this weekend.
This annual event is a dream for lovers of pre-1975 cars, as it puts thousands and thousands and thousands of great automobiles on mobile display in the midst of a giant, good-natured party on Detroit's main drag, and anyone is welcome to take part in the parade or line the streets, for free.With over a million people watching the cars go by, it must be noted, there is also a significant opportunity for world-class people watching.On the third Saturday of every August for the past decade, more than a million fans turned the 25.7 km stretch of eight-lane road into the largest automotive event in the world. They sat or stood as thousands of classic cars cruised slowly by from around I-696 in the south to State Road 59 in Pontiac, through nine different communities, including Berkley, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Bloomfield Township, Ferndale, Huntington Woods, Pleasant Ridge, Pontiac and Royal Oak.
The deal is that the cruisers (there were more than 40,000 last year) simply drive up and down Woodward between those points all day Saturday, though increasingly the people who attend show up early and Woodward is full of classic cars for days ahead of the primary event.For people who want to watch rather than drive, the key issue is finding a spot to watch from. Since the cross streets and even Woodward are open to regular traffic all through the event, it's possible to get close to the action in a car but hard to find a place to park and get out to watch. People turn up way ahead of time to get a good spot on the boulevard between the sidewalk and the road.So you're encouraged to arrive the day before and leave early for the parade route. People along the family-friendly route are good-natured about the event, but not when it comes to someone trying to take their hard-won spots.Despite the best efforts of the city and Detroit's auto industries, the Dream Cruise is a highly unstructured event. It started out as an idea for a small cruise to raise money for charity and was popular beyond anyone's expectations from the beginning.
There is no entry fee for the vehicles taking part in the cruise, though this year the organizers are running a voluntary US$25 fee for the first time. The money will go to cover the expenses of the communities that host the event, and will make the cruiser eligible for a bunch of prizes.These are not the type of prizes you see at traditional old car events where people take things way too seriously (yes, I'm talking about you, Pebble Beach), since they include such categories as the "car your mother would have died if she saw you in," and the "car you would have liked to have had in high school," and things like that.