'Car heaven': The Woodward Dream Cruise is rumbling and roaring again

Ferndale — Gas prices are rising and inflation is being a pain, but those are concerns for another day.

Saturday is about pedal to the metal, show ‘em if you got ‘em, throw all your money out the car window.

That’s right, the Woodward Dream Cruise is back.

“It’s my favorite holiday,” said Ralph Hull, 63, of Rochester Hills. “It’s all about cars and I’m a car nut.”

The yearly auto bacchanalia doesn’t just arrive; it erupts, it bursts forth, it reverberates. Tens of thousands of colorful people and their colorful machines will seize Woodward Avenue from Ferndale to Pontiac.

And what wondrous machines they are.

These cars from yesterday sport twin turbos, gold rims and chrome plates. They feature stripes, flames and multiple tones. They have tail fins and oversize grilles and suicide doors, oh my.

They also have something else.

They’re from a time when automobiles meant America, and America meant Michigan, and Michigan meant Detroit. The Camaros and Corvettes and Thunderbirds were made by the attendees’ families or maybe the attendees themselves.

“We made these. We should be proud,” said Maddie Dixon, 47, of Milford. “Nobody else did what we did.”

Joining the fun will be roadside displays showing the automakers’ latest models, include ones with electric motors.

But electricity is one thing, souped up and tricked out is another. The real voltage may emanate from the fluorescent colors sported by some of the vintage cars.

They won’t be hard to find. They’ll be parked or sashaying along a 16-mile ribbon of concrete coursing through nine communities.

Year in and year out, the Dream Cruise lives up to its billing at the biggest one-day auto event in the world. It’s expecting 40,000 vintage cars and 1 million people.

And that’s just on Saturday. Some hot rods and muscle cars couldn’t wait to get started. They began showing up from other states a few weeks ago. The trickle became a stream and, on Friday, the stream began to bubble.

Here are a few snapshots from the eve of Car Craziness.

'Car heaven'

Sitting under a canopy in Ferndale, Ralph Hull couldn’t think of a place he would rather be.

In back of him was his pride and joy, a blue 1972 Ford Mustang, which drew an admiring crowd. In front was a flotilla of chrome and steel that made his heart flutter with each passing car.

“It’s like I died and went to heaven, car heaven,” he said. “It’s like meeting a thousand people who are just like you.”

Like him, in some respects, and different, in other ways. The different colors and architecture of the cars showed their owners’ different personalities, he said.

Hull always thinks of himself as a conservative sort, a numbers cruncher for a logistics company. But then he climbs into his Mustang. And Hull the accountant becomes Hull the Steve McQueen character in “Bullitt.”

A sentimental journey

Debbie Duttweiler, 53, of Orlando, Fla., traveled to Royal Oak for the Dream Cruise to honor her late father, who never attended the annual auto extravaganza. Duttweiler and her mother, Jan, 79, drove their amethyst pearl 1947 Plymouth from Florida to attend the cruise as part of a 14-day road trip from Orlando to South Carolina, Michigan, Canada, Pennsylvania, Georgia and more. 

Duttweiler said she’s spent the last several months preparing the Plymouth to be “road ready,” including getting new tires and an alignment, a new water pump and suspension bushings. In total, she estimates it cost around $2,800 to upgrade, a price that was well worth it. It was important to Duttweiler to drive the car to the Dream Cruise, she said, because her father was so passionate about driving and he gave the old Plymouth its initial restoration in the mid-'90s. 

“Somebody said, ‘Well, you drive a truck. Why don't you just put on the trailer and haul it up on the truck?’ and I said, “Because this car was built to drive,” Duttweiler said. “The ‘47 Plymouth is a rare car and Dad took his time building it. There's a lot of detail in the car, which makes it even more unique and because he just passed away it's a little more of a road trip for him, too. He loved to take in the street rods out and go on road trips.”

The amethyst pearl paint on the Plymouth is a Lexus color from the 1990s, Duttweiler said, and the engine is an LS1 small-block V-8 from a Chevy Corvette. She estimates the car would cost around $40,000 to $50,000 if she were to sell it, but she doesn’t know how much her father paid to buy it. 

Duttweiler, her mother, and her friends Jude and Dan Stewart, 69, of Amherstberg, Ontario arrived at the Royal Oak Memorial Park event at 10 a.m. and spent the day checking out vehicles and talking to others about their builds. 

Jude Stewart, 61, said she’d been trying to convince Duttweiler to bring a car up for the Dream Cruise for several months before she agreed back in January. 

“Her dad would be beaming with pride that his girl brought a baby, one of his babies, up to one of the biggest car shows ever,” Stewart said. 

Duttweiler said she is the “guinea pig” to determine if she and the rest of her friends will return to the Dream Cruise in the years to come. Instead of driving in the parade of classics on Woodward Saturday, Duttweiler said she and her friends will spend the day back at Royal Oak Memorial Park to see even more vintage vehicles. 

“People come from all over us because they love their cars. They've put a lot of heart and soul into their cars and they want to talk about their cars and the adventures and the things they've done and places they’ve gone,” Duttweiler said.

His little GTO

Carmen Tuzzolino, 79, of Sterling Heights, said he’d been coming to the Dream Cruise since it began in 1995, though he’d attended unofficial Cruise drives and other events in prior years prior. He said he brought his 1966 Pontiac GTO to Memorial Park in Royal Oak because it was the car he was driving when he met his wife.

“She fell in love with the car immediately,” Tuzzolino said. “She was driving a 1966 Barracuda and we met in the McDonald’s parking lot.”

The Montero Red car has a Pontiac 389 V-8 engine; Tuzzolino said the car hasn’t had any upgrades since he finished rebuilding it in 1989. Though he bought it for $1,500, he estimates he could resell it for between $60,000 and $70,000 today. On Saturday, his nephew will drive his 1970 Pontiac GTO alongside him in the parade down Woodward.

Tuzzolino said on Saturday, he and his family will arrive at the park about 7 a.m., an hour before it opens, because he’s heard there will be over 600 cars and wants to ensure they have a good spot to park, which will cost $60. 

“I’ve always loved cars,” Tuzzolino said. “I grew up racing cars down Gratiot every night, but in the '80s I actually started restoring them.” 

Tuzzolino put effort into the presentation of his vehicle, nicknamed the GeeTo Tiger. To represent the 1966 slogan, he placed three stuffed orange tigers: one in the trunk, so the tail dragged behind the car, another large one on the roof, and a small one on the engine.

A fine '57

Paul Patrico, 60, of Shelby Township, attended the Royal Oak Memorial Park event with his mother, Ann, 90, and wife, Julie, 52, to show off his late father’s 1957 Chevy convertible. The robin’s egg blue vehicle has had no modifications except a tire replacement, Patrico said. The paint, engine and interior are all original and the car only has around 30,000 miles on it. 

He said the vehicle was used on the set of the 1983 film “Eddie and the Cruisers” and his father loved it so much, he reached out to MGM studios to buy it. Patrico estimates his father spent around $40,000 on the vehicle. 

Patrico said he began attending the Dream Cruise with his father long before it earned its official name and hopes to keep the hobby of restoring cars in the family. His children will be at the event with him Saturday and he hopes they’ll all drive the car together for the day-long affair.

“We’ll here about 8 o'clock and we're gonna park back here with the Chevrolet dealerships, because they're all bringing all the oldest Chevys in together,” Patrico said. “They'll come up with arrangements for the parade and then we'll walk the park and then go out for a drive. So we’ll be here all day.”