[PICS] The Corvettes of the 2019 Woodward Dream Cruise

Aug 21, 2019

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[PICS] The Corvettes of the 2019 Woodward Dream Cruise

Photo Credits: Steve Burns

It’s always hard to describe the Woodward Dream Cruise. After all, it is the world’s largest one-day automotive event. It’s not your typical car show. Usually, we can show you coverage from all corners of an event like Corvettes at Carlisle or Bloomington Gold, but the Dream Cruise is 16 miles long. We usually share photos of most of the cars at a traditional Corvette show, but the Dream Cruise draws upwards of 40,000 collector cars each year.

Cars are everywhere. They’re tucked into parking lots, side streets, and parks along Woodward Avenue from Ferndale on the south end to Pontiac on the north end. While you’re checking out cars parked off Woodward, there are thousands more whizzing by on the street (when traffic is actually moving). When something loud drives by heads swing around fast enough to cause whiplash. All day long attendees in chairs and tents alongside the road point out interesting rides to their neighbors.

The whole event is an amazing thing to take in.

Last Saturday marked the 25th anniversary of the first Dream Cruise in 1994. It was a perfect August day in Michigan. Scattered clouds filled the sky while people perused all that there was to see. Given the great weather, it appeared that attendance was up both by people and cars. During the cooler morning hours, the number of older cars out cruising was higher than we’ve noted in recent years. By midafternoon when the heat kicked in, cruising was mostly made up of newer cars with more heat-tolerant cooling systems.

The bulk of the cruise’s activity lies between Royal Oak and Birmingham (13 Mile and 15 Mile roads) which is where we spent our time this year. Starting in Royal Oak we slowly worked our way north to Birmingham. Here we checked the Chevrolet display which was dominated by Corvettes. The pop-up C8 display was there along as the white Corvette generational display GM’s been using for years now. Not sure how long the wait was to see the C8, but the line was way longer that we saw at the Concours d’ Elegance a few weeks ago. CERV I and CERV II were also on display showing Corvettes midengined lineage. Other notable Birmingham displays included Lingenfelter Performance Engineering, Kindig-it Design, and Spring Mountain Performance Driving School.

From there we wandered back southward to Royal Oak and the 13-mile road area which is the unofficial epicenter of the whole event. Chevrolet Performance had a significant display featuring Corvettes, Camaros, NASCAR and IndyCar racers, and more. Free t-shirts were flying out the door as well.

As the sun began to set we headed back the Motor City Bureau headquarters and closed the frunk on the 2019 Woodward Dream Cruise. We say this every year, but if you’ve never been here, it belongs on your car show bucket list and is worth every penny of the trip. Enjoy our Corvette flavored gallery from this year’s Dream Cruise below.