Classic Cars Rev Up Engine of Memory in Dream Cruise

It has become the mecca of auto fanatics, an annual driving of the cars that, like the running of the bulls in Pamplona, has evolved into a weeklong party and parade--and even vacation destination.

Today is the Woodward Dream Cruise, a pageant of chrome, whitewalls and multi-barreled carburetors along 16 miles of Woodward Avenue from the edge of Detroit to the northern suburb of Pontiac. It’s expected to attract 1.5 million spectators to gawk and drool over a virtual river of 30,000 classic cars.

The Dream Cruise, now in its seventh year, is touted as the biggest single-day automotive event in the country. Started as a local cruise much like gatherings in Hollywood or Anaheim, the event has ballooned into the ultimate pilgrimage of classic car restoration and hot rod customization.

Devotees come from as far away as Japan and Australia. Chuck Lombardo, who runs California Street Rods in Huntington Beach, shipped his black ’56 Chevy with a brash flame paint job and 355-horsepower engine from the West Coast to Detroit so he could join the procession.

“You come here, you see some things you only see here. There’s no event like this in California; there’s not as much nostalgia as here,” says Lombardo, his tanned face ringed with a white shock of hair and beard. “It all started back here, if you think about it.”

Indeed, Woodward Avenue says much about cars and Detroit.

Woodward was the first paved road in America, circa 1908, and symbolized the growth of the Motor City--and the flight of its population--as it stretched from downtown to Six Mile Road, then to Fourteen Mile and Nineteen Mile, passing through the posh suburb of Bloomfield Hills before ending 27 miles later in Pontiac, the city named for an automobile and an Indian chief.

Like a Rose Parade in summer, people start arriving a week early to show off their wheels in this slice of American nostalgia.

Tim Bilbrey, of nearby Sterling Heights, has staked out his family’s regular spot since Tuesday in front of a dentist’s office on Woodward, a divided boulevard lined with family restaurants, car dealers and small businesses.

By Thursday the Bilbrey clan had grown to a couple of dozen, including four siblings, his father--who started a family tradition by watching the first Cruise in 1995--up from Florida and a posse of friends, stretched out on lawn chairs and foldaway stools, drinking pop and munching chips. Come this morning, he says there’ll be 75 of them in one spot.

“My dad and I both have hot rods,” said Bilbrey, a 35-year-old auto mechanic and owner of a ’69 Chevelle that he’s painted teal. “And this is the biggest event in Deee-troit. It brings everyone old to young out here.”

His pal Mark Mungle uses his vacation time to take a week off every Cruise season.

“It’s the highlight of the year for me,” said Mungle, 44, a trucker who lives a few miles away in Warren. He’s restoring a ’79 Ford F150 pickup to cruise someday.

They watched as the fins and hood ornaments rolled by, whooping and hooting at some, hoping they’d honk back.

There was a red ’64 Buick Skylark. A brown ’66 Ford Fairlane hardtop. A ’58 Chevy Belair, then another. A black ’70 American Motors AMX. And countless Mustangs, Dodge Challengers and Corvettes.

“We’ve been cruising all week. You’re always in the spirit of it if you’re my age and own a classic car,” said Drew Belian, who described himself as 59 1/2.

He’s been out in his blue ’67 Mustang convertible and his Oldies 104.3 radio station T-shirt. “Right after school we’d do our homework, get something to eat at Big Boy, put a dollar’s worth of gas in the car and go cruise for girls and races,” Belian recalled of the days when he was--oh, 14 1/2. “You could find a race any time on Woodward in ‘56,” when he was a high school freshman, a newly minted driver with a license valid from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The cruise, in effect, has become a 16-mile block party. Jan Chaffee lives in Royal Oak just off Woodward and has a barbecue planned for today so friends can pop down to the avenue between wieners.

“I love the cars. I used to cruise Woodward for fun, since you couldn’t drink till you were 21,” says Chaffee, now 49.

She has a ’67 red Chevy Chevelle convertible that her husband gave her--after he “toned it down” to a mere 525 horsepower. “Before, you couldn’t even drive it without racing fuel,” Chaffee says.

She’ll keep the monster--which she was displaying Thursday, hood up, alongside Woodward--at home today to avoid the bumper-to-bumper gridlock. “I’ll be out cruising on Sunday; it won’t be so crowded.”

Her friend Janet Felk, 42, met her future husband while cruising Woodward.

“I was with a bunch of girlfriends in a blue AMC Javelin,” Felk said. “He was in a van . . . He mooned us, as a matter of fact.”

But Felk doesn’t like what the cruise has become.

“They advertise it too much; it’s too commercial. There are too many normal cars; you can’t see the muscle cars,” she complained, as a mid-’70s Ford Maverick maneuvered among modern-day--and nondescript--cars of the Ford Taurus or Mazda 626 ilk.

But the Woodward extravaganza, with its families and kids watching the world of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s roll by, represents both past and present, just as a Chevy Suburban represents the 1940s and 2001.

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” says Bilbrey, the mechanic out with his kinfolk. “I live and die for Woodward.”