Dream Cruise 2023: Classic cars and their fans take over Woodward
Under clear blue skies, classic car lovers lived the dream Saturday on Woodward, with the 28th annual Dream Cruise in full swing from Ferndale to Pontiac from early morning past sunset.
Here are some of the sights (and sounds) from Metro Detroit's yearly celebration of car culture, Motown muscle and the region's rich automotive heritage.
Baby's first Cruise
It was 13-month-old Walt Cragun's first Woodward Dream Cruise, along with his parents Hannah and Chase. The family just moved to Farmington Hills from Las Vegas.
"I have a good friend who's from Clinton and when I said, 'what should we be looking out for when we move to Michigan? Where should we go?' He said, 'you can't miss the Woodward Dream Cruise,'" Hannah Cragun, 28, said.
The family was particularly taken with Charlie Liles' emerald green 1948 Ford F1 pickup truck, displayed in Royal Oak's Memorial Park.
"I actually saw one of these 10 years ago in a mining town," Cragun said. "(This one) was definitely more restored and beautiful."
Liles, 66, has lived in Royal Oak his whole life and attended all 28 Dream Cruises.
"I've been cruising Woodward for 50 years," he said.
Liles bought and restored the truck with his wife seven years ago.
"We drive it all over, it's just a hobby, a fun truck," he said.
Long live the 300
The Chrysler 300 ends production this year, but it will live on at the Cruise in the hands of enthusiasts like Mason Vetor.
The 22-year-old brought his wicked-looking, white, heavily modified 2018 300S to the Cruise this year. How wicked? He turned up the wick on the already robust Chrysler Hemi-V8’s 324 horsepower to 600 horses with mods like new headers and intake manifold to feed the beast under the hood. Well, if it had a hood.
“The intake manifold is so big I had to take the hood off,” said the Shelby Township resident. “It’s a pain to keep the engine clean, but it looks good.”
The mods don’t end at the engine. The Chrysler is lowered on custom gold Gray Star wheels, and the exhaust exits at the rear axles for added volume. Inside, Vetor added a blue “harness bar” for added chassis stiffening and deleted the rear seats. “Rear seats and passengers just add weight to the car.”
Better to blow the doors (and hood) off anything out of a Woodward stoplight.
A legacy on wheels
For some, like Len Palmeri, vintage cars serve as reminders of loved ones. Palmeri, 74, built his hot rod by hand with his father in 1969. The one-of-a-kind car is modeled after a 1929 Mercedes.
"The best gift my father could've ever given me was to help me build this car," Palmeri said.
"I learned a lot from him and you carry those skills with you the rest of your life and carry the memories because he's no longer with me."
The car is priceless to Palmeri and contains custom details like the names and initials of his parents, Tony and Jean.
Catering to car lovers
Pasteiner’s has been a Cruise tradition since before the annual Woodward Dream Cruise became an official event nearly 30 years ago.
Opened in 1987 by Steve Pasteiner, the Birmingham hobby shop has been a favorite of motorheads ever since, and it is a regular stop on the cars ‘n’ coffee circuit every Saturday morning throughout the summer. For the Dream Cruise, the store steps it up a notch with an official Cruise T-shirt and catered hot dogs and other eats for the passing crowd. Its parking lot, of course, is packed on this Dream Cruise Saturday with toys from Dodge Vipers to old Model A Fords to Pastenier’s own creations like the Nomad and Helldorado.
“The Cruise has really evolved over the decades as it’s become more famous,” said Pasteiner, who is also president of Advanced Automotive Technologies and a regular judge of auto concours. “Now it’s much more international in terms of the variety of cars — and the people. I had a couple of customers come in here wearing cowboy hats and jeans — and they were French! Didn’t speak a word of English. The Cruise now attracts people from everywhere.”
Celebrities, too.
Comedian and talk show host Jay Leno popped into Pastenier’s Saturday morning to look around, as has Detroit native and comedian Tim Allen in the past. “But it’s the auto executives who are the true celebrities in my mind,” said Pasteiner. “Like Mark Reuss, Jim Farley, Bob Lutz — they come in and we just talk cars.”
Celebrity aside, Pastenier said the Cruise is special because you can talk with anyone about cars on Woodward, bond with them, and the next thing you know you’re best friends.
“It’s different than, say, a Pebble Beach concours (that took place this week in California),” he said. “People work on their own cars and bring them to the Cruise — at Pebble, the owners have someone else do that for them.”
Chevy meets half-Chevy
Ronald Page, 75, of Oak Park, Illinois, drove his 1960 Chevrolet Impala, a gleaming white convertible with warm red accents, to Metro Detroit for the Cruise.
The ride takes more than five hours, but it’s worth it to Page, who was waiting patiently to get a picture of an upside down van riding down Woodward.
He’s made the trek every year the cruise has been on since 2015. He does it for the people, the car camaraderie and the festivities.
“I mean, I meet so many different people from different walks of life,” he said.
This year, one of those people was Ted Zulkowski, 52, of Roseville, who parked his “Forvette” in front of Page’s classic.
The “Forvette” is half of a 2001 Chevrolet Corvette topped with a 1931 Ford Model A truck. Zulkowski and his father-in-law built the truck/car over a two-year period, even giving it air conditioning while also ensuring it had the horn and front pheasant ornament like the Model A.
The two had the Corvette and then found the truck in a field “and wanted to … bring it back to life,” Zulkowski said. “So we grabbed the tractor and pulled it out of the field and there's where we started.”
Classics present and past
Tom Psilles owns a pristine 2005 Chevy Corvette C5, is a past president of the American Corvette Club, and has been coming to the club’s Dream Cruise paddock in the Walgreen’s parking lot in Birmingham for 22 years.
But his wife, Joan, 78, had the couple’s first classic.
She bought one of the first, 1964½ Ford Mustang coupes when it hit dealer lots nearly six decades ago. “It cost me $2,100 and I remember wondering if I’d be able to make the payments on it,” she smiled while watching cruisers stream by in front of the pharmacy.
She sold it a few years later (“It was just daily transportation then”), but when she and Psilles decided to buy a 1960s collector car 25 years ago, they started looking for Mustangs. Instead, a 1961 Corvette caught their eye. They restored it down to the floorboards, cruised the wheels off it, then turned it around for a handsome sum.
Still enamored of ‘Vettes, they drive the C5 now. “I love the styling,” said Tom. “And it’s comfortable. We go to Tucson every winter and we’ve taken the Corvette on the trip there and back.”
A Demonic possession
For a second straight year, car collector Leno took part in the Dream Cruise. At the 2022 event, he unveiled a special version of Ford Motor Co.'s all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup with a custom paint job designed in tribute to a 1970s F-150 once owned by Walmart founder Sam Walton.
This year's visit was all about gas-fueled, V-8-powered muscle, as the former longtime "Tonight Show" host became the first buyer to take possession of a "Last Call" Dodge Challenger SRT 170 Demon. It's one of 3,000 1,025-horsepower beasts being unleashed as Dodge ends production of its internal combustion engine muscle cars.
Leno took the wheel of his Octane Red model at Vinsetta Garage in Berkley and pulled out onto Woodward Saturday morning, followed in a black Demon by Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis.
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