Detroit Dreamin' and Cruisin' on the Road Tour
What started 12 years ago as a one-day tribute to the famous Detroit cruising scene of the '50s and '60s has turned into a weeklong automotive festival covering 15 miles of Woodward Avenue, involving thousands of cars and over one million people. From my home in Youngstown, Ohio, it is a short four-hour drive to Detroit, and since it was a weekend off from the official Road Tour, I had to check it all out.
On Wednesday, I made a stop at ASC Corp. in Southgate, Michigan. Since the mid '60s, the folks at ASC have been some of the leaders in the special vehicle market, as they were innovators in the development of the OEM sunroof market and most recently were instrumental in the design and production of the Chevrolet SSR pickup. Their latest project is the development of a steel bodied 1933 Ford roadster with a retractable top. They have tweaked Henry's design with today's street rodder in mind. Watch the pages of STREET RODDER magazine for progress on this bold project.
I was invited by the folks at GM Performance Parts Division to display this year's 1934 Chevy Coupe at their employee car show. The folks at GM Performance have been major supporters of this year's Road Tour and the Ramjet 350 engine under the hood has been performing flawlessly all summer. Also on hand at the show were NASCAR drivers Kevin Harvick and Clint Boyer, and team owner, Richard Childress.
On Thursday evening I was invited to a special open house at the GM Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, Michigan near the GM Tech Center. This 80,000 square foot facility is filled with the 100 years of GM's automotive history. There are over 150 vehicles on display and the archives contain hundreds of thousands of documents and artifacts. While this facility is not open to the public on a regular basis it is available for meetings and special receptions.
While the cruising on Woodward had been going on all week, the official Dream Cruise takes place on Saturday. It was raining in the morning, but the skies cleared and it was bumper to bumper all afternoon. My good friends Sandy and Mike Eaton from Eaton Springs invited me to park the Tour Coupe in a lot they had lined up for the afternoon. It was a great day, as I got a chance to talk to lots of folks and enjoy all the activities of the 2006 Woodward Dream Cruise.
In a few weeks, Road Tour #5 gets started in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, at the famous Shades of the Past event and travels north to the NSRA Nationals North in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We will be making stops in Knoxville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Detroit on our way to the 'Zoo. Check out the itinerary here on our Web site and think about joining us on the Road Tour.