Editors Note: The Woodward Dream Moving Cruise is said to be the largest movingcruise in USA with millions of auto buffs watching the event along it’s route. A decade ago the MA Cruisers of Norfolk, MA were forced out of their every other Thursday night Still Cruise an US Rt. 1 in Sharon, MA when Bickford’s Restaurant changed hands and the new owners sent the MA Cruisers packing.
The organizers were forced to relocate its Cruise Night. All that turned out to be a blessing in disguise when they asked the newly built management of the Bass Pro sporting goods store in Patriot Place in Foxborough, MA in a shopping mall, also on US Route 1 some four miles south. In a short period of time, the event held every other Thursday night, drew a huge amount of vehicles!
Because the event is held adjacent to Patriot Stadium’s parking lot resulted in a record turnout of classic cars and the like from miles around. At the height of the summer Cruise season the event is capable of drawing in the vicinity of 2,400 vehicle of all types. Hot Rods,Classic Cars, Military Vehicles, race cars as well as specialty built vehicles, too numerous to mention! As we write this note the BASS Pro Cruise has also been on hold by the organizers due to the Corona Virus.
By Daniel Strohl on Jun 29th, 2020
Source: Hemmings
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Woodward Dream Cruise, 2008. Photo by Amateur.
The Woodward Dream Cruise may stretch for miles along a public highway, mimicking for one day of the year the era of cheap gas and hot cars in a constant parade through the northern Detroit suburbs, but the event’s board of directors decided this week to cancel the event altogether after the nine cities along its route asked them for an official declaration.About a month after the nine cities along Woodward Avenue separately passed resolutions calling for the organizers of the dream cruise to cancel this year’s event, leaders from those communities all met Monday morning via Zoom to vote to cancel their legs of the event. In response, the event’s board of directors, which had delayed making a decision on the fate of this year’s event until this week, voted for cancellation.”In April, the board already decided to cancel the community events—the car shows, the live entertainment, what I call the bells and whistles—to reduce the number of people who would come out,” said Michael Lary, the president of the Woodward Dream Cruise. “Since then, a majority of the nine communities felt it needed to be officially canceled, not just the community events. Ultimately, the decision was made today based on our respect for the political will of the communities.”What exactly that means at this point, however—and what impact the vote will have on deterring cruisers from showing up en masse the week leading up to the August 15 event—nobody seems to know.”That’s a very good question,” Lary said. “This has never happened before, so we’ll find out. Cruisers are gonna cruise, no matter what. We wanted to figure out how best to send a message to the spectators who might show up to see the cruisers.”According to Lary, the state’s department of transportation already confirmed to the dream cruise’s board that Woodward Avenue cannot be shut down for any reason because it’s a state highway.As The Detroit Newspointed out over the weekend, the cities along the route have already canceled their ancillary events and in some cases declined to issue permits for businesses operating along the route this year. But on the other hand, some longtime fans of the event—which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year—still intend to make the Ferndale-to-Pontiac loop in their classics, muscle cars, and hot rods that weekend.Both in April and in May, organizers of the event reiterated that they planned to go forward with it. Lary, in his first year as president for the event, said the board didn’t want to rush into a decision over cancelation for a number of reasons. “We didn’t want to arbitrarily make a decision and walk away,” he said. “For instance, this decision impacts a lot of nonprofit organizations who use the Dream Cruise as an opportunity to raise funds. There were a lotta pieces to the pie we had to vet through.”The Woodward Dream Cruise organization itself will take a financial hit too, Lary said. According to the Woodward Dream Cruise Inc.’s 2018 most recently available Form 990s, the nonprofit has run in the red three of the last four years, depending largely on sponsorships (from both Chevrolet and Ford) to cover its expenses, primarily advertising and sponsorships of other events.”We anticipate we’re going to have to think outside the box and be prepared for future events,” Lary said.
Lary said that public health concerns did weigh on the board’s decision too. “This is not just about the Dream Cruise,” he said. “We know people want normalcy, but until there’s a vaccine or a cure, this is going to continue. It’s not me, it’s we.”He said he does remain optimistic for 2021. “No matter what, there will be a 2021 event,” he said.Estimates for the number of Woodward Dream Cruise attendees vary widely, from 1 to 2 million, with both participants and spectators coming from all over the United States, Canada, and Europe. As of this writing, the Detroit region is in Phase 4 of Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s Safe Start Plan, under which social gatherings are limited to small groups with social distancing, and outdoor crowds are limited to no more than 100 people; not until the fifth of the six-phase plan does it permit all outdoor recreation.First held as a fundraiser for youth soccer fields in Ferndale in 1995, the Woodward Dream Cruise has since grown into what its organizers claim to be the world’s largest single-day automotive event with official participation from General Motors, Ford, and FCA. As some observers have noted, not even the 2003 blackout, which occurred a couple of days before that year’s Woodward Dream Cruise, kept cruisers and spectators from showing up for the event.For more information on the event, visit WoodwardDreamCruise.com.