{"id":19095,"date":"2016-08-19T13:52:18","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T17:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=19095"},"modified":"2016-08-21T13:54:13","modified_gmt":"2016-08-21T17:54:13","slug":"camaros-light-the-torch-to-open-woodward-dream-cruise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2016\/08\/camaros-light-the-torch-to-open-woodward-dream-cruise","title":{"rendered":"Camaros light the torch to open Woodward Dream Cruise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Timothy<\/p>\n<\/div>

Move over, Corvette. This year Camaro is Chevy\u2019s King of the Cruise. Celebrating its 50th anniversary, the iconic pony car lit up its tires and lit the torch to open the 22nd Annual Woodward Dream Cruise on Friday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cCamaro owners, start your engines!\u201d roared General Motors product development chief Mark Reuss. His call unleashed bedlam on Detroit\u2019s waterfront as 250 Camaros roared to life in the Joe Louis Arena parking lot.<\/p>\n

Reuss then jumped into a 455-horsepower 2016 Camaro SS \u2014 the same car Roger Penske used to pace the field at this year\u2019s 100th Indianapolis 500<\/a> \u2014 and led the noisy parade up Interstate 75, through mid-morning traffic, and onto Woodward. Final destination: the Iroquois Club north of Square Lake Road. While Penske hit 140 mph on Indy\u2019s back straight, Reuss was much more civilized, following a police escort at a tame 50 mph.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the Camaro\u2019s cruise. You only turn 50 once,\u201d grinned Reuss, whose first car was an original red 1967 Camaro that he found for $1,500 in Missouri.<\/p>\n

GM\u2019s motorhead-in-chief was followed by Camaro faithful who answered the call for this year\u2019s parade from 16 states, Ontario \u2014 and one guy from Norway. All six generations of the car were represented.<\/p>\n

Among the field was Mark Stielow of Milford, Michigan. GM engineer by day, Camaro hobbyist by night, Stielow has updated 15 original Camaros to modern spec \u2014 including the stunning yellow \u201969 SS he stuffed with a 6-liter V-8 from the current ZL1 Camaro, six-speed manual transmission (replacing the old \u201cthree-on-a-tree\u201d) and coil-over shocks. You could hear him fire it up from Pontiac.<\/p>\n

Walt Stiles, 73, came all the way from Syracuse, New York, for the morning \u201cCamaros and coffee\u201d rally in his pristine red 2016 Camaro SS. This is Stiles\u2019 fourth Camaro \u2014 the first was a 1994 Z28 \u2014 and it is his favorite. No wonder \u2014 the sixth-generation cars are light-years advanced from that fourth-generation. Today\u2019s car is not only built on a stiff platform shared with the nimble Cadillac ATS, but it has 4G LTE WiFi, Apple CarPlay and state-of-the-art suspension. The original car rode on leaf springs still found in pickup trucks today.<\/p>\n

Polished to perfection, Stiles\u2019 coupe won \u201cBest 2016 Camaro\u201d at Lansing\u2019s Assembly plant Thursday where the Camaro faithful took a plant tour<\/a>. Then the whole Camaro development team \u2014 Reuss, chief engineer Al Oppenheiser and designer Tom Peters among them \u2014 signed its engine bay.<\/p>\n

I followed Peters up Woodward in his own classic red 1969 Camaro. I was behind the wheel of a brand-new 2017 50th anniversary-edition SS festooned with Detroit News decals. Chevy is offering the 50th anniversary edition with all three powertrains \u2014 turbocharged 4-cylinder, V-6 and V-8. You\u2019ll know it by its \u201cNightfall Gray metallic\u201d color, orange accents \u2014 Brembo brake calipers, hood stripes, leather seat-stitching \u2014 and unique 20-inch wheels. With \u201cFIFTY\u201d tattooed on the front fenders, Chevy expects to sell 5,000 of them.<\/p>\n

I tried to provoke Peters into some burnouts up Woodward with the modern 560-horsepower, 427-cubic inch V-8 that he stuffed into his car. But he behaved himself.<\/p>\n

As did Reuss who was clearly tickled to be in the same car Penske had driven at Indy. It was Reuss who asked the 79-year-old Indy legend to pace the field at Indy in his 50th year racing at the brickyard. \u201cHe was over the moon about it,\u201d recalls Reuss, \u201cNo one had ever approached him about doing it before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The parade even included a classic 1991 Camaro cop car the Michigan State Police still owns. Underneath its blue exterior is an IROC-Z \u2014 the performance version of the \u201991 Camaro Z28.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used them for traffic enforcement only,\u201d said officer and driver Mike Shaw, 52, referring to the muscle car\u2019s specialty of running down high-speed scofflaws. \u201cWe could chase down anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Friday\u2019s parade, everyone stayed in line.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Move over, Corvette. This year Camaro is Chevy\u2019s King of the Cruise. Celebrating its 50th anniversary, the iconic pony car lit up its tires and lit the torch to open the 22nd Annual Woodward Dream Cruise on Friday morning. \u201cCamaro owners, start your engines!\u201d roared General Motors product development chief Mark Reuss. His call unleashed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19095"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19096,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19095\/revisions\/19096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}