Ford vs. Chevy Redux in the Woodward Dream Cruise Battle of the Billboards

Ford vs. Chevy Redux in the Woodward Dream Cruise Battle of the Billboards

It’s beginning to look a lot like Dream Cruise. It’s still not the commercial automotive powerhouse it was three or four years ago. It’s certainly not the Pebble Beach Concours/Monterey Historics, and that’s a good thing. A friend at a rival publication who is heading out west right about now considers the Concours a flog, with luxury brands turning it into yet another international auto show.

But the Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise is bouncing back from the dark, un-sponsored days of the post-bankruptcy period of the past two years. Its new car show is likely to consist of something like a Camaro ZL1 cruising in plain sight among the original Camaros, Mustangs, ‘Cudas and Challengers. After two years of laying low through post-bankruptcy GM, Chevrolet is the official sponsor of this year’s Cruise. Chevy holds a 100-car parade commemorating its 100th anniversary on Thursday.

Earlier in the last decade, Ford sponsored a tent full of its new and old sheetmetal in tony Birmingham, Michigan, on the northern end of the heart of the Dream Cruise, the Buick-Cadillac/Mercury-Lincoln/Chrysler-Imperial part of town. Ford shut its tent down about the time the company took out a $23 billion line of credit.

Ford vs. Chevy Redux in the Woodward Dream Cruise Battle of the Billboards imageTake Woodward Avenue from Birmingham to Ferndale for your commute home in the evening this week (or from Ferndale to Birmingham if you happen to earn more than the average motoring journalist) and you’ll share the road with the type and vintage of cars that take to the lawn or racetrack at Pebble/Laguna Seca. Driving a white Chrysler 300 SRT8 last night, I could have raced for pinks with a cherry MGTF, though its driver obviously was far too smart for that. Instead, I made a u-turn in Birmingham to take a second look at an unpainted, but otherwise solid 1955 Chrysler Windsor convertible parked at the Hunter House hamburger restaurant. Its patina made it that much more desirable.

While the pre-Cruise cruising – which means not just the vintage cars that run up and down Woodward all summer, but also crowds watching them in lawn chairs — has become thick only in the last week or two, the Woodward Dream Cruise Billboard Face-off began in late July. Ford vs. Chevy Redux in the Woodward Dream Cruise Battle of the Billboards imageIt’s the kind of battle that will appeal to anyone with a Ford oval or Chevy bowtie tattooed to his or her backside. Recently, Ford has taken its display to the auto journalists’ ghetto, Ferndale, closing off part of Nine Mile Road perpendicular to Woodward Avenue.

It’s called “Mustang Alley.” You can see a banner for Mustang Alley in my snapshot of the Chevrolet billboard. That’s right – Chevy bought the billboard just north of Nine Mile on Woodward, with a photo of a Polo White ’53 Corvette on the northbound side and a ZR1 opposite that, smack in the middle of Blue Oval territory.