Cruisin' the Original Woodward Avenue

By Anthony Ambrogio, Sharon Luckerman and Woodward Heritage Team

In the 1950s, cruising swept the nation. American street became impromptu racetracks as soon as the police turned their backs. Young people piled into friends cars and cruised their main streets with a new sense of freedom. Pent-up desires after the hardships of World War II plus a booming economy fueled a car-buying frenzy. To lure buyers to their particular makes and models, automobile companies targeted the youth market by focusing on design and performance. No place was that more relevant than on metro Detroit s Woodward Avenue, the city s number-one cruising destination and home of the world s automobile industry. Barely 50 years earlier, Henry Ford rolled his first Model T off the assembly line at Piquette and Woodward, just south of where cruisers, dragsters, and automobile engineers ignited each other s excitement over cars. This unique relationship extended into the muscle car era of the 1960s, as Woodward Avenue continued to reflect the triumphs and downturns of the industry that made Detroit known throughout the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Jul 12, 2006
• ISBN: 9781439616826

Anthony Ambrogio

Funded in part by a grant from the Federal Highway Administration�s National Scenic Byway program and with guidance from the Woodward Heritage Team, Detroit writers Anthony Ambrogio and Sharon Luckerman interviewed numerous local historians, automobile engineers, automobile museum directors, and Detroiters who cruised during these extraordinary decades.

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Ambrogio

INTRODUCTION

Woodward Avenue, southeast Michigan’s main street, stretches 27 miles through 11 communities: Detroit, Highland Park, Ferndale, Pleasant Ridge, Royal Oak, Huntington Woods, Berkley, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Bloomfield Township, and Pontiac. The Woodward corridor has been intimately linked to the automobile industry for more than 100 years. It has been home to General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Studebaker, Packard, and many other automobile manufacturers in the early 20th century. Of particular note, the Woodward corridor is where Ford’s Model T was born. This car, the first affordably priced automobile, made car ownership possible for a broad spectrum of the American population. And as car ownership became democratized, popular culture grew up around it and eventually expressed itself most emphatically as cruising.

In the 1950s, cruising swept the nation. American streets became impromptu racetracks as soon as the police turned their backs. Young people piled into friends’ cars and cruised their main streets with a new sense of freedom. Pent-up desires after the hardships of World War II plus a booming economy fueled a car-buying frenzy. To lure buyers to their particular makes and models, automobile companies targeted the youth market and focused on new styling and performance features. No place was that more evident than on metro Detroit’s Woodward Avenue, the city’s number-one cruising destination and home of the world’s automobile industry. Barely 50 years earlier, Henry Ford rolled his first Model T off the assembly line at Piquette Street and Woodward, just south of where cruisers, dragsters, and automobile engineers ignited each other’s excitement over cars. This unique relationship extended into the muscle-car era of the 1960s, as Woodward Avenue continued to reflect the triumphs and downturns of the industry that made Detroit known throughout the world.

Rock ’n’ roll, the hip music of the time, pulsed with the rhythms of the new era as the sensation of freedom and power from driving a fast car captured the American imagination.

In the 1950s, it was not unusual to jump into one’s car with three or more friends—all chipping in for gas—and cruise Woodward Avenue, driving the 10 miles from Ten Mile Road to Square Lake Road, then back again, four or five times a night. Kids checked out each other’s cars and the people in them as they drove the avenue, sometimes stopping for a burger or just to see who was hanging out at a favorite drive-in restaurant. And in those days, there were plenty along Woodward, among them the Totem Pole, Dan’s Big Town, Maverick’s, Sylvia’s, the Dipsey Doodle, and Ted’s. None exist today.

Cruising was a national phenomenon. But in Detroit the unique relationship between the Woodward cruisers and the nearby automobile companies spurred a special experience.

What drove the cruising era in Detroit was the contact with the automobile engineers who privately or quasi-officially, participated in cruising as well, says Barry Dressel, manager of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

In the 1950s, automobile engineers tested their ideas on Woodward Avenue after dark, though it was illegal for them to race their cars. What they learned was not lost on the local teenage dragsters and cruisers. Nor did the car companies overlook the youngsters’ creative tinkering to enhance their cars’ performance, giving them parts and exchanging advice.

I was 14 when I started cruising down Woodward. I lived for it, says Larry Payne, cruiser, racer, and current owner of Duggan’s Irish Pub on Woodward. He started driving on his 16th birthday and tinkering with his car at the same time. We didn’t know we were doing research for those cars, we were just having a lot of fun. It was the car era!

Automobile legends emerged from this rich milieu.

One of the many car clubs that formed in those days was made up of local Chrysler engineers, technicians, and designers who called themselves the Ramchargers. The founder, National Hot Rod Association Hall of Famer Tom Hoover, built a powerful 426 Hemi engine similar to the 352 Hemi the Ramchargers used in a club car they built called the High and Mighty. In 1959, their car was almost laughed off the drag racing track until it went on to make automobile history.

At General Motors in 1964, a young maverick engineer, John Z. DeLorean, stuffed a big engine into an intermediate-size car, called it a GTO, and started the muscle car era. Lee Iacocca, a 35-year-old vice president and general manager at Ford Motor Company in 1964 launched another new class of cars with his inexpensive, sporty coupe called the Mustang. Soon every car company had to build a version of Ford’s popular pony car.

Nostalgia for this spirited time in automobile history still reigns on Woodward Avenue today with the opening of several car museums and the annual Woodward Dream Cruise, the largest one-day classic car cruising event in the world. Ask any 1950s cruiser about his or her experience and it is not long before one hears about the bygone era when cars were king. It was a simpler time in history before conflicts like the war in Vietnam divided the country. Those were the happy days, they say, when driving was in everybody’s blood.

The legendary High and Mighty was built by the Ramchargers in 1959. (Burke.)

One

AUTOMOBILES AND WOODWARD AVENUE

EARLY BEGINNINGS

For over