<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n
“I’ve been cruising Woodward for 50 years,” he said.<\/p>\n
Liles bought and restored the truck with his wife seven years ago.<\/p>\n
“We drive it all over, it’s just a hobby, a fun truck,” he said.<\/p>\n
Long live the 300<\/h2>\n The Chrysler 300 ends production this year, but it will live on at the Cruise in the hands of enthusiasts like Mason Vetor.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
\u201cThe intake manifold is so big I had to take the hood off,\u201d said the Shelby Township resident. \u201cIt\u2019s a pain to keep the engine clean, but it looks good.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mods don\u2019t 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 \u201charness bar\u201d for added chassis stiffening and deleted the rear seats. \u201cRear seats and passengers just add weight to the car.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n
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Better to blow the doors (and hood) off anything out of a Woodward stoplight.<\/p>\n
A legacy on wheels<\/h2>\n 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.<\/p>\n
“The best gift my father could’ve ever given me was to help me build this car,”\u00a0Palmeri said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
The car is priceless to Palmeri and contains custom details like the names and initials of his parents, Tony and Jean.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n
Catering to car lovers<\/h2>\n Pasteiner\u2019s has been a Cruise tradition since before the annual Woodward Dream Cruise became an official event nearly 30 years ago.<\/p>\n
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 \u2018n\u2019 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\u2019s own creations like the Nomad and Helldorado.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Cruise has really evolved over the decades as it\u2019s become more famous,\u201d said Pasteiner, who is also president of Advanced Automotive Technologies and a regular judge of\u00a0auto concours. \u201cNow it\u2019s much more international in terms of the variety of cars \u2014 and the people. I had a couple of customers come in here wearing cowboy hats and jeans \u2014 and they were French! Didn\u2019t speak a word of English. The Cruise now attracts people from everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Celebrities, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
Comedian and talk show host Jay Leno popped into Pastenier\u2019s Saturday morning to look around, as has Detroit native and comedian Tim Allen in the past. \u201cBut it\u2019s the auto executives who are the true celebrities in my mind,\u201d said Pasteiner. \u201cLike Mark Reuss, Jim Farley, Bob Lutz \u2014 they come in and we just talk cars.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n
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\u2019re best friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s different than, say, a Pebble Beach concours (that took place this week in California),\u201d he said. \u201cPeople work on their own cars and bring them to the Cruise \u2014 at Pebble, the owners have someone else do that for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chevy meets half-Chevy<\/h2>\n 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.<\/p>\n
The ride takes more than five hours, but it\u2019s worth it to Page, who was waiting patiently to get a picture of an upside down van riding down Woodward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
He\u2019s made the trek every year the cruise has been on since 2015. He does it for the people, the car camaraderie and the festivities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I meet so many different people from different walks of life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
This year, one of those people was Ted Zulkowski, 52, of Roseville, who parked his \u201cForvette\u201d in front of Page\u2019s classic.<\/p>\n
The \u201cForvette\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n
The two had the Corvette and then found the truck in a field \u201cand wanted to \u2026 bring it back to life,\u201d Zulkowski said. \u201cSo we grabbed the tractor and pulled it out of the field and there’s where we started.\u201d<\/p>\n
Classics present and past<\/h2>\n 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\u2019s Dream Cruise paddock in the Walgreen\u2019s parking lot in Birmingham for 22 years.<\/p>\n
But his wife, Joan, 78, had the couple\u2019s first classic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
She bought one of the first, 1964\u00bd Ford Mustang coupes when it hit dealer lots nearly six decades ago. \u201cIt cost me $2,100 and I remember wondering if I\u2019d be able to make the payments on it,\u201d she smiled while watching cruisers stream by in front of the pharmacy.<\/p>\n
She sold it a few years later (\u201cIt was just daily transportation then\u201d), 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.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n
Still enamored of \u2018Vettes, they drive the C5 now. \u201cI love the styling,\u201d said Tom. \u201cAnd it\u2019s comfortable. We go to Tucson every winter and we\u2019ve taken the Corvette on the trip there and back.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Demonic possession<\/h2>\n 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n
hpayne@detroitnews.com<\/em><\/p>\nkhall@detroitnews.com<\/em><\/p>\nhmackay@detroitnews.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31361"}],"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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31362,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31361\/revisions\/31362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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