Detroit, Mich. – Sagging sales and escalating gasoline prices haven’t deterred Detroit boosters from celebrating the Motor City’s automotive heritage with a month full of events that recall the halcyon days when the Big 3 ruled the world.
Four big spectacles will occur in southeast Michigan in August – nicknamed “Autopalooza August” by organizers – leading off with the 30th annual Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance, followed by the Woodward Dream Cruise, and concluding with the Detroit Grand Prix on Labor Day weekend and the newest addition to the lineup, “Cruisin’ Motor Cities.” All this automotive celebration continues into September as General Motors and the Model T Ford celebrate their 100th anniversaries.
The new kid on the block, “Cruisin’ MotorCities,” brings the aura of the Woodward Dream Cruise to the City of Detroit between Aug. 8 –16. “These great events collectively make for one truly incredible automotive celebration,” noted Christopher Ilitch, president and CEO of Ilitch Holdings, which owns Little Caesar’s Pizza, the Detroit Tigers baseball team and the 2008 Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings hockey team. “Cruisin’ MotorCities … is the rumble of an engine, the shine of chrome, the sparkle of a custom paint job, the intrigue of engineering or the muscle of horsepower that gets you revved up,” for the Woodward Dream Cruise, concluded Ilitch, who is also president of the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau, one of the promoters of Autopalooza August.
Cruisin’ MotorCities starts off with the second annual Detroit Festival of Speed and Style, Aug. 8 -10, brings more than 100 cars– from classics to hot rods, super cars – plus vintage and custom (so-called “chopper” bikes) motorcycles to Campus Martius Park and neighboring Cadillac Square in downtown Detroit. The event also includes a charity motorcycle ride – possibly attracting upwards of 3,000 bikers and 250 cars– Aug. 7 from Pontiac to downtown Detroit and a tour of the Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix racetrack.
One of the people planning to participate in the Festival of Speed and Style is chopper builder “Dozer.” The owner of Dozer Cycle and Great American Chopper in Clawson, Mich., Dozer recently completed a custom motorcycle for two clients in southern Kentucky. Called “Last Ride,” the steel human skeleton covering the bike is “anatomically correct” and took 18 months to build, he said. B
Bringing the Cruise to Motown
Billed as an “auto-tourism festival,” the new Cruisin’ MotorCities-related activities bring the spirit of the Woodward Dream Cruise to Detroit, noted Gary R. Familian, managing director of MotorCities National Heritage Area, an organization that promotes the region’s automotive history. There will also be parades, cars, displays, concerts and rides on Woodward Avenue from Foxtown (near Comerica Park, home of the Tigers) to Campus Martius. “Ultimately, we are spreading the essence of the (dream) cruise to all corners of our region,” Familian said. All of these events also will honor General Motors’ centennial anniversary (called GMnext) and the Model T’s birthday.
For years, the organizers of the dream cruise have tried to engage Detroit in the event, which ran through the suburbs of Oakland County, north of Eight Mile Road (the city’s limits) to the city of Pontiac. 
“We felt it was important to recognize the role that Detroit played with cruising,” added Dale Dawkins, the new president of the dream cruise’s organizing committee. “Cruising started by people going drive-in to drive-in and cruise the drive-ins. There was a little competition on Woodward, but the real cruising was the drive-ins.” Having grown up along Woodward, Dawkins worked as an executive for three of the four American car companies – twice for Chrysler, General Motors, and American Motors Corp. (AMC).
The Cruisin’ Tradition“The goal was to look cool, which was hard to do in a junky car like I had originally,” said Dawkins, whose positions at Chrysler included being vice president of truck products. “Later, we did test out the cars on Woodward during the ‘70s. John DeLorean was a cruiser. Roger Penske was a cruiser and took new prototypes around to get a feel.” (Among his notable – or notorious – feats, the late DeLorean was well-known for skewing General Motors’ executive bureaucracy in his autobiography, “On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors” plus creating his own short-lived auto company. Automotive magnate and racecar owner Penske has led a corporate effort to revitalize Detroit). “The Woodward Dream Cruise has proven to be a very successful event and it shows what’s really unique about Detroit and its fascination with the automobile,” Penske said. “It’s good to see that activities are expanding around the Dream Cruise in August and it’s creating other opportunities for events in downtown Detroit. These events can only help generate more interest and activity in our region.
“We’re happy to play a part in Autopalooza August with the Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix on Labor Day weekend and we’re looking forward to working with all of the other events taking place throughout the month and into the fall to help showcase the Motor City.”
Another part of the Cruisin’ MotorCities festival, General Motors will open its “Heritage Center” in the Oakland County suburb of Sterling Heights, near the GM Technical Center in Warren, to a special tour. “Normally the GM Heritage Center is closed to the public… but it contains the most incredible collection of GM cars in the world,” Familian added.
For more information on Cruisin’ MotorCities, including a day-by-day calendar of events such as the GM Heritage Center tour, visit http://www.greatcarstv.com/www.cruisinmotorcities.org. (Visitors can get to the Web site if they spell “cruising” correctly too). Year of the CarEleven days apart, both General Motors and the Model T Ford were born in September 1908. When Detroit auto enthusiasts at MotorCities National Heritage Area looked at the calendar two years ago, they began planning for a series of summer-long “auto tourism” festivities for visitors to Michigan that is being billed as the “Year of the Car.”
“The objective is to provide cross promotion and audience building for all of the major events and honor GM and the Model T,” said William Chapin, consultant to MotorCities and grandson of Roy Chapin Sr., the founder of Hudson Motor Co. which eventually became part of AMC. The world’s automotive sales leader for 76 years, General Motors was founded in Flint thanks to the creative genius of William Crapo Durant. A Flint businessman who made his millions producing horse-drawn buggies, he brought together Buick, Oldsmobile and Cadillac and purchased dozens of other automakers and parts suppliers to form GM.
The automaker grew beyond Durant – who had a penchant for stock market wheeling and dealing that led GM to the brink of financial disaster twice – but many of the corporation’s early (and later) executives made a major impact on the development of automobiles, aircraft, road construction, safety equipment, and more. Some of its early executives, including Charles Nash and Walter P. Chrysler built their own car companies out of nearly bankrupt firms. “Over the years, a whole lot of car companies that started when GM did have bitten the dust,” noted Katie Kerwin, editor of AutoBeat Daily and president of the Detroit Automotive Press Association. “Who today remembers Studebaker, Packard and other long-lost brands? Being able to survive for 100 years is a significant accomplishment.” Flint Joins the FunThe City of Flint – GM’s birthplace – is hosting several General Motors celebrations starting from July 12 -20, including a July 19 tour of homes that had belonged to GM executives, and a parade of 100 vehicles, representing GM products made between 1908 and 2008, on July 20. For more information, see www.flintgm100.com.
Flint also will hold the “Back to the Bricks, Cruise Weekend” Aug. 13 –16, a free event which will include Wednesday and Thursday nighttime cruises from Grand Blanc to downtown Flint before the big “Friday Night Cruise-In” and party.
The official GM anniversary, called GMnext, will kick-off with events related to the Woodward Dream Cruise, including the possibility of a motorcade from the GM Renaissance Center to join the regular cruise, according to Juli Huston-Rough, GM communications manager for GMnext and Thomas K. Freiman, GM manager of Media Archives. “Many of the events are still in the planning stages,” Huston-Rough noted. “What we are doing is directing folks to www.GMnext.com, which is a dialogue-based Web site, offering live chats on design, technology and environmental issues.”The GMnext Web site also provides an interactive Wiki link where GM employees have posted anecdotal stories and photos.
At the Dream Cruise, General Motors plans to assemble a series of the automaker’s iconic vehicles along with employee-owned vehicles, Frieman added. On Sept. 16, GM’s founding date, the automaker plans for a large celebration at the RenCen, though details have yet to be announced, Chapin added.
The Car That Put the World on Wheels.
The Model T represents the culmination of Henry Ford’s dream to make the automobile affordable for the mass public, rather than an expensive toy for the rich. His goal was to make a rugged car that could traverse the early rough roads of the early 20th century and be easily repairable by average people. Once production began on the four-cylinder “Tin Lizzy,” the automaker dropped production of other models.
The Model T became one of the longest-lasting marques in the auto industry, with very few changes, until it was discontinued in 1927 after 15 million had been made. For the Model T’s centennial, The Henry Ford in Dearborn is hosting dozens of commemorative activities throughout the year. Visitors to Henry Ford Museum will have the opportunity to help assemble a real Model T while Greenfield Village offers attractions such as a Model T ride, tours of Henry Ford’s birth home, and more. Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn will hold an open house Friday Sept. 5 for Model T owners going to the Greenfield Village’s Old Car Festival held Sept. 6 –7. There will be an informal party for participants at the Model T Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit (the factory where the Model T was first conceived and built prior to the construction of the Highland Park Plant).
For the first time ever, MotorCities has arranged for The Henry Ford, the Henry Ford Estate-Fair Lane on the campus of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe, and the Piquette Plant to collaborate, Chapin noted. Called the “Ford Four,” visitors to The Henry Ford can purchase tickets to visit the other Ford-related sites where there will be Model T exhibits throughout the summer.
On Sept. 27, the official date when the first Model T. was built at Piquette (“job one”), Ford Motor Co. and MotorCities are sponsoring the Ford Model T Centennial Motorcade. “The motorcade will include estimated 50 -75 Ford vehicles, representing Model Ts and Ford products for the last 100 years,” Chapin said. “It will start at Ford World Headquarters, proceed to the Piquette Plant where the new façade will be dedicated – the front of the building is being restored – and go from there to the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, Fair Lane, and wrap-up with a celebration outside of the clock tower at the Henry Ford Museum… This will be Ford’s official recognition of the celebration of the Model T.”
The Mainstays of Autopalooza August
A celebration of vehicular power and beauty, the 30th annual Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance leads off the “Autopalooza” with events starting Thursday, July 31, and concluding with the main show Sunday, Aug. 3. This year’s event will include displays of classic V16 powered cars, such as the luxurious 8-litre Bentleys from the 1930s, plus displays to celebrate the centennials of GM and the Model T. The Tudor-styled Meadow Brook Hall was once the home of Matilda (Dodge) Wilson, the widow of automotive pioneer John F. Dodge who founded the car brand with his brother Horace.
The mansion and land are now part of Oakland University. Celebrating its 14th year, “the Woodward Dream Cruise is the largest single automotive event in the world,” Familian said. “Last year, it drew an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 special cruisers and an estimated 1.4 million spectators in one day.” Originating as an event for Detroit area baby boomers who longed for the days when “cruisin’ Woodward” was a coming of age event – and an unofficial test bed for automotive designers and engineers for impromptu street races, the Dream Cruise has evolved with corporate sponsored events along with car club barbeques.
Officially it remains a one-day event on Saturday, August 16, that covers 16 miles from the Michigan State Fairgrounds to Pontiac. Among the participants in the cruise will be Linda Vaughn, well-known among hot rodders and cruisers as Miss Hurst Golden Shifter. More recently she has been semi-retired, but still works as a spokes person for GM at various automotive events around the country.
“The first time I saw Woodward Avenue was with Bunkie Knudsen and John DeLorean in a Pontiac (with a Hurst shifter),” Vaughn said. (Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen was DeLorean’s superior and rival at GM during the 1960s.
He briefly became president of Ford Motor Co. but was fired after a year by Henry Ford II). “I’m from Georgia originally and never lived in Detroit, but I was there so often people thought I lived there,” Vaughn said. “America is the automobile and America needs this… I will anything and everything to help the spirit of America.”
Ending “Autopalooza August” is the Detroit Grand Prix on Labor Day weekend. After a six-year hiatus, the open-wheel race returned to Belle Isle in 2007, thanks to the instrumental help of Penske, the owner of racing teams in the American LeMans and IndyCar Series, along with many other civic and corporate leaders of the Downtown Detroit Partnership (DDP). More than $5.5 million in improvements, including renovations the Scott Fountain (a rather prominent landmark at the northern end of the island that the race track curves around) and the Belle Isle Casino (this is a building for public gatherings, not a gambling hall), were made to the island’s facilities last year as a result of the 2007 Grand Prix.
This year additional landscaping and beautification efforts are underway to prepare for the races on Memorial Day weekend. The 2008 Grand Prix is going green this year. The vehicles racing in the American Le Mans Series will be using either diesel fuel or E10 or E85 blends of fuel while the IndyCar Series will again compete on the island using 100 percent fuel-grade ethanol. Additionally, the Motorsport Industry Association is hosting a Sustainable Motorsport Conference at the Detroit Yacht Club Aug. 28. The conference will look at energy efficient technologies and innovations.
Clearly there's something here for any blue-blooded auto fan. As long time car dealer Cal Worthington used to say, "Come on down."
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