I C O N S O F W O O D W A R D AV E N U E
We pay tribute to the glory days of 1960s street racing, when muscle, style and stealth marked out the true winners in the horsepower wars WORDS N AT H A N C H A D W I C K PHOTOGRAPHY J A M ES H A E F N E R / M EC U M
IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE ‘SOCIAL media’ meant hand-written notes with coordinates for illicit street races, rather than a repository for internet bile. Or where ‘social networking’ involved lining the sidewalks of Woodward Avenue, the air filled with the sweet smell of tire smoke. Imagine a glorious symphony of V8 roars, working the baying crowd to ever-higher levels of excitement as heroes were made and legends were born. It was a glorious era, when Detroit’s Big Three had a nudge-nudge, wink-wink approach to such activities. The suits could never officially endorse street racing, of course, but underneath lay the beating heart of genuine car guys. With a win on the street, they knew their sales figures would be hard to beat… Woodward Avenue was the battleground for a four-wheeled arms race between Ford, GM and Chrysler, each determined to outdo each other with ever more powerful and extreme muscle cars. Petrol-heads would spend all week tweaking, tuning and perfecting their ride to take on the best local talent between
the lights at the weekend. It was a time of great possibility. Put the right amount of effort in, and with perhaps a dose of luck, the win could be yours – the American Dream painted in large black stripes down the public road. Out of these emotive times great stories abound – not just the cars, the triumphs and the tragedies, but the social history, too; lifelong love affairs formed in brake-light-illuminated parking lots – and not just for the motors. It’s this passion – for the cars, we might add – that drives M1 Concourse today. The influence of those heady times lives on far and wide; the concept of street racing that was developed and encouraged by manufacturers in the 1960s has been taken up around the globe. Without the white-hot battle for Saturday-night supremacy in the center of Detroit, the entire car world, let alone its enthusiast angle, would look very different. Such pride in our history is what forms the basis of M1 Concourse – and what better way to demonstrate that than to bring together three of the biggest legends from this magical time?
