Why I Skipped Monterey Car WeekIllustration by Tim Marrs / Photos by Matt FarahMonterey Car Week had some truly insane numbers thrown around this year. There were record-breaking sales for a whole bunch of modern and semi-modern cars, and a Ferrari friggin Luce sold for nearly as much as Carroll Shelby's own friggin Cobra Daytona. What a world.Like many of you, I saw those numbers from far away, on Instagram and through headlines. I wasn't there in person with the automotive glitterati, where I can get in the club, as long as I sing for my supper. That's because for the first time in a dozen years, I skipped Car Week (gasp!).I was not, however, scrolling at home or taking a (probably needed) mental health break. No, instead I was getting carbon monoxide poisoning (the good kind) from a lawn chair on the edge of Woodward Avenue, as high school kids with cardboard signs insisted—through veiled threats masked as jokes—that everyone who passed by attempt a burnout. I spent Car Week at the Woodward Dream Cruise, and it was the ultimate Pebble Beach palette cleanse.2026 Woodward Dream CruiseNever heard of it? Well, you better ask somebody because Woodward is the largest single-day automotive event in the world, drawing tens of thousands of cars and over a million people to Detroit to celebrate the time-honored American tradition of cruising the boulevard, making noise, and maybe doing a little bit of mischief... if the coast is clear.AdvertisementAdvertisementA quick bit of history: for better or worse, Detroit will be inextricably linked to cars forever, and to a certain type of driving. Woodward Avenue (M-1) is the city's most major thoroughfare, running 21 miles from downtown Detroit to Pontiac, Michigan. It is mostly four lanes each way, with lights approximately every quarter- or half-mile, and a dividing grass barrier in between. By the late 1950s and certainly through the 1960s, gearheads cruised, hung out, and street raced down Woodward Avenue, including all three of my uncles on my mother's side. It is a car-centric city's most car-centric road.That truck and camper pair is not what it looks like.Matt FarahIn the Seventies and into the Eighties, cruising fell out of favor along with the decline of the city itself and the American auto industry (What early Eighties American crapcan would you actually want to cruise or race anyway?). But in 1995, the Woodward Dream Cruise started up as a charity event. It quickly became huge, and 31 years later, it is positively insane. This will be my third trip to Dream Cruise, but my first in 13 years.While Saturday is the official cruise, I arrived Wednesday to find Woodward Avenue incredibly well stocked with interesting metal, plenty of folks hanging out in camping chairs in the grassy medians and in parking lots, and impromptu car meets in front of businesses and in gas stations. The sound of thundering big blocks, shrieking liter bikes, and burbling BMWs echoed from all directions. But in between, it was still business as usual, with stores open and commuters intermixed with hot rods, land yachts, and idiot tourists like me.My wheels for the week.Matt FarahFord was kind enough to provide me with "PB5," a legendary pre-production 2004 GT—the first, in fact, modern GT to ever be painted in the iconic Gulf livery. A full story on the scruffy, unsellable, and marvelous 28,000-mile machine will appear in an upcoming print edition of Road & Track, but suffice to say cruising in this car is like arriving at your hotel in Rome driving a Ferrari SP3. Long story short, you are effectively a god. My crew balanced out the historic brilliance of the GT by borrowing a candy-apple red Escalade V—the 700-horsepower six-seater with a remote cold start function that serves as an unofficial Detroit mating call.AdvertisementAdvertisementContrary to what you might think, the weekend is not simply wall-to-wall muscle cars. Yes, they are well represented, infinitely customized, with hoods proudly popped when parked, but it's far, far more than that. The variety eclipses even that of Monterey Car Week. I saw Skylines and Silvias, Pre-War Deuseys and coach-built Caddys. I saw Donks. Ferraris, Porsches, and Lotuses cruised along Woodward alongside T-Buckets, Low Riders, Motorcycles, Monster Trucks, and McLarens. There was a (singular) Bugatti Chiron, but two matching white 1977 Pontiac Can Ams; in fact, I don't think I've ever seen so many beautifully preserved malaise-era cars from all countries cumulatively as I saw this one weekend in suburban Detroit.Two-car solution?Matt FarahAs you get toward the main event, the street gets busier and busier, to a crescendo at around 7 PM Saturday. Thursday probably has the best ratio of cool cars cruising without overwhelming crowds, police presence, or "civilians," folks rolling down Woodward in their regular cars, trying to be part of the action. Each night at 10 PM, a huge procession of cops in cars and on motorcycles "closes down" the cruise, forcing people into narrow lanes off Woodward Avenue for about half an hour, before most just pack up and go home. That's when you start to see cars with slicks and parachutes come out to play. After hours, pop-up events happen all over the city, at independent dealerships, at warehouses, or in parks.Everyone is interchangeably spectator and participant. As far as I could tell, there isn't a single event the entire weekend (outside of The Smoking Tire Podcast Live) that charged admission or required calling friends with a hook-up. Cruising, obviously, is the main activity, and frankly you don't even need a cool car to partake, though I really do recommend finding a way into some kind of cool car to avoid fucking up the ratio of cool cars to normies. Cruising along and finding a cool gathering on the roadside? Any time but Saturday, pull right in and say hello! I found crowds of Corvettes, Beetles, Mustangs, and old British stuff.Matt FarahSaturday itself, nearly every parking lot is reserved for events and parties, including all the businesses—many Woodward Ave leases, we learned, include specific clauses allowing the landlord exclusive property use for Dream Cruise—frequently booting their own tenants in the process! Starting as early as Wednesday, locals stake claims along Woodward sidewalks by setting up canopy-less pop tent frames; the sanctity of calling your spot is respected even halfway into Saturday's activities. For 16 miles along Woodward Avenue, people, cars, barbecue grills, coolers, campers, bleachers, and parked show cars line the road. Families bring their kids, parents, and pets. You can be the show, or you can hang and let the show come to you, or both.AdvertisementAdvertisementIn the movie The Purge, crime is legal for one day a year. That's how I think about the Woodward Dream Cruise, except instead of actual crimes like robbery and murder being legal, it's fun, whimsical law skirting like driving a Radical SR8 or a full-on NASCAR on the street, doing a burnout to entertain a crowd, stunting on a GSXR at a red light, or fully pushing the limits of what can be considered a "car" at all. I saw boats, jet-skis, self-powered pop-up campers, couches, and V-8 barstools loping their way down the Ave. I'm not suggesting that these things actually become legal, but they happen so frequently and in such view of the public that although a few people do get tickets for being stupid, most are free to play. You might see a 60-year-old Le Mans car driving down Carmel Valley road at Car Week, but did you see a current NASCAR at the drive-thru? I think not.JEFF KOWALSKY - Getty ImagesWhat don't you get in Detroit that you get in Monterey? Well, scenery, for one. Michiganders are some of the finest folks you'll ever meet, but the roads are flat, straight, and dull. One afternoon in the D and you'll understand how American cars earned their sloppy, yacht-like reputations. Even Birmingham, probably the nicest spot around, can't, and won't ever be Carmel. But considering a four-bedroom house basically costs as much for a week as it would have cost in Carmel for a night, the value is there.More importantly, cars are not treated like investments at the Woodward Dream Cruise. There are no ten-figure auctions. There are no auctions at all! Billionaire clients are not recommissioning used Bugattis. There are no exclusive parties where the current owner of a supercar gets to suck up to the company's executives in hopes of the next allocation. People aren't looking to get in on the next collecting trend, amass the "big five" hypercars, or take home a value-securing concours trophy. Here, as in most of the car-enjoying world, are thousands of cool enthusiast cars on which tens of thousands of people have lost unfathomable amounts of money. Because the car isn't an investment vehicle or part of a portfolio. It's a passionate hobby, with a "built, not bought" attitude even when driving a stock car, not thinking past the next traffic light at 13 Mile, "Should I, or should I not, light up these Mickey Thompsons?"JEFF KOWALSKY - Getty ImagesWhen insane car values dominate the discourse, when Monterey Car Week has become the go-to place for hypercar transactions, hypercar spotting, and hypercar flashing, when cars that were barely causing a stir two years ago are now trading at three or four times what they were, it's hard not to feel like car enthusiasm has left regular people behind. Instead of those cool cars being a potentially attainable fantasy, they are increasingly out of touch, repetitive, and, dare I say, boring.AdvertisementAdvertisementDon't get me wrong, I love Monterey, I love exotic cars (driving them, anyway), and I will be back. I may not be the 0.01 percent, but I do have silly blazers, a Panama hat, and I can sneak my way into any party, as long as it's a party about cars. Monterey is by, for, and deferent to the world's billionaires and their tastes, which grow increasingly tacky with each passing year. There are, after all, only so many ways to make your 911 Reimagined by Singer look different from all the other 911s, Reimagined by Singer.But for the other 99.9 percent, those who want to hear and smell engines, celebrate history, nerd out on the strangest cars you've ever seen—minty-fresh oddballs forgotten by us but preserved by loving owners with utter disregard for what that car might fetch at auction—the Dream Cruise is just that. Gearhead heaven.You Might Also LikeIf You Can Only Own One Car, Make It One of TheseThese Are the Most Popular Cars by State