Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel’s effort to cross-promote the Woodward Dream Cruise and the Selfridge Air Show is just the beginning.
The “Wings and Wheels Weekend” has the potential to be a huge success. But Hackel is already thinking bigger.
The executive said recently that he hopes that the Motor City can eventually hold a classic car cruise that includes both strips that were populated in the past with the best muscle cars the Big Three had to offer – Woodard and Gratiot.
Hackel said he envisions the Woodward Dream Cruise expanding to the east side by having the cruisers travel a loop that takes them from Pontiac, south on Woodward, onto the famed Eight Mile, and Eight Mile to Gratiot. They then would travel north on Gratiot to Chesterfield Township and loop back toward Eight Mile and on to Woodward.
The Dream Cruise is already the largest event of its kind in the nation, but this would be something more.
“That would be the largest cruise in the world,” Hackel said. “That would be phenomenal.”
Of course, it’s difficult to imagine that such a huge endeavor – an event spanning approximately 36 miles – could be accomplished. After all, it’s taken years of effort to create a single Gratiot Cruise and that goal still has not been attained.
Then again, Hackel may be on to something.
The biggest complaint about the Dream Cruise is that, with 1.25 million spectators and more than 10,000 classic cars, it’s just become too big for Woodward to handle. The crowds are jammed together, parking is at a premium, and the hot-rodders are often moving at a crawl.
But if you spread the event out over nearly 40 miles, it may prove that bigger is better.
