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Corvettes on Woodward: King ‘Vette fires up the Dream Cruise
Posted by Talbot Payne on August 14, 2025
Pontiac — It’s good to be king.
If the Woodward Dream Cruise were the Pride Lands, then Chevrolet Corvette would be its lion king. For eight generations and 72 years, America’s longest-running sportscar badge has ruled Woodward Avenue with its roaring V-8 engines and muscled bodywork. And for over 20 years, the Corvettes on Woodward event has been a focus of Woodward Dream Cruise week with its massive gathering of muscle.
This year’s Pride Rock is Michigan’s premier motorsports club, M1 Concourse in Pontiac, where over 500 Corvettes gathered Wednesday from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. for pictures, exhibits, panel discussions, camaraderie, and, of course, cruising.
M1 Concourse
“There’s nothing like a Corvette with the top down on Woodward,” said Andre Walker, 60, of Detroit as he rolled onto Woodward at Rapid Street, rowing the gearbox of his red, fifth-generation 2002 Corvette C5. “They only made 178 of this particular trim because the manual was rare for that model year.”
Passion for the Corvette runs deep and brought not only generations of cars but generations of owners here to celebrate the marque. Larry Courtney, 78, of Warren and his wife, Vern, started Corvettes on Woodward over 20 years ago to benefit the Open Hands Food Pantry in Royal Oak. It’s grown into the largest Corvette gathering in Michigan, attracting owners from all over the country — and spectators with a $20 gate charge.
Henry Payne, The Detroit News
“The urban legend is there were 40 of us hanging around with our Corvettes having ice cream, and someone said: ‘we can do a lot better than this,’ because we have Michigan’s largest Corvette Club,’” smiled Courtney, then a member of America Corvette Club who now runs Michigan Corvette Events.
Corvettes on Woodward first gathered at the Kingsley Hotel in Birmingham, where it eventually burst at the seams. Over 500 Corvettes were crammed into a hotel lot with 180 parking spaces. When the group spilled out on to Woodward for a lap of the Cruise route, the chain would run for seven miles.
“The police said we couldn’t all go out at the same time anymore,” said Courtney. “It was just too many cars.”
Henry Payne, The Detroit News
So Corvettes on Woodward has found a new home here in Pontiac on M1’s 87-acre campus where ‘Vettes can sprawl across two paddocks, a skid pad and 1.5-mile race track.
“It’s logical for Corvettes on Woodward to be here,” said M1 CEO Paul Zlotoff, who teased that Corvettes on Woodward will move to Thursday in 2026 as part of a three-day M1 Dream Festival. “We’re set up for this kind of event because we celebrate motorsports in an organized way. We could bring 2,000 Corvettes in here.”
On Wednesday, dozens of red, white and blue Corvettes gathered in front of M1’s event center to form an American flag for a drone-snapped photograph. Corvettes like a white, first-generation, front-V6-engine 1954 C1 convertible owned by Tom Gamache, 85, from Canton Township — and a red, eighth-generation, mid-V8-engine 2023 C8 Stingray owned by Aldrin Santiago, 53, of Sterling Heights.
Henry Payne, The Detroit News
“I was 12 years old in 1953 when General Motors showed the first Corvette at Motorama in New York,” said Gamache, who bought his car in 1999. “And I thought it was the most beautiful car I had seen and I would own it someday.”
How does he think the first-mid-engine Corvette C8 looks?
Henry Payne, The Detroit News
“It’s great. That’s the Corvette that Zora (Arkus-Duntov, Corvette’s influential first engineer) always wanted to do,” he said, standing next to his new friend Santiago, who he had just met at the flag photo. “The handling of those things is unbelievable.”
Corvettes on Woodward founder Courtney likes all generations but settled on a 1999 Corvette C5 for himself wrapped in an American flag color scheme. “I like the C5 because I can fit and we do a lot of road trips,” he said. “We travel all over the country doing events.”
Henry Payne, The Detroit News
Bobby Keyes, 69, of Lake Orion enjoys so many generations of Corvette (he owns a 1969 and 1982) that for his third Corvette he bought a rare custom model with a 1957-style, C1 coupe body on top of a C5 chassis.
“I liked it because it was different, custom, and they only built five of them,” he said of the Stewart, Florida-made ‘Vette built in 2017. Colored blue, his car formed the top left corner of the American flag photo.
Henry Payne, The Detroit News
M1’s Event Center offered relief from the day’s blazing sun — and activities like sim racing, a slot car track, and Corvette jewelry for sale. Cindy Pronze, 50, of Canton Township showed off a white bracelet she bought featuring the Corvette flag logo.
“It will go nicely with the 1976 Corvette that I’m restoring,” she said.
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne.