{"id":41501,"date":"2011-08-17T06:28:20","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T10:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=41501"},"modified":"2011-08-17T01:34:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T05:34:54","slug":"big-change-in-store-for-classic-woodward-dream-cruiser-garage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2011\/08\/big-change-in-store-for-classic-woodward-dream-cruiser-garage\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Change in Store for Classic Woodward Dream Cruiser Garage"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Columnist Mike Davis sits in front of the Vinsetta Garage during better days. Photo by Len Katz.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s curious news for the Dream Cruise coming to Detroit\u2019s Woodward Avenue this weekend.\u00a0 An icon of the muscle car era will be going through a dramatic change.<\/p>\n

Last December, the historic Vinsetta Garage unexpectedly shut its doors.\u00a0 Perhaps nothing along the city\u2019s main boulevard was more closely associated with the era of muscle cars \u2013 or the annual Woodward Dream Cruise that draws tens of thousands of classic cars and over a million spectators to line the long route.\u00a0 So, many were worried that the retro-classic garage would be knocked down for yet another strip mall or chain restaurant.<\/p>\n

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Get the Complete Story!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But according to a report in The Detroit Free Press, <\/em>the 91-year-old facility will reopen next spring as a moderately upscale restaurant \u2013 but one likely maintaining the familiar Vinsetta Garage fa\u00e7ade and logo.<\/p>\n

The old building, with its long disconnected Shell Oil gasoline pumps, has been a familiar site to Woodward motorists, formal (as in Cruisers) and informal (mere commuters), for decades.<\/p>\n

When I first moved to the Detroit area in the late 1950s, I had my high-mileage Plymouth repaired at the Vinsetta. Former owner Mike inspected used Mercurys for me until we found one acceptable after I went to work for Lincoln-Mercury in the Sixties. Three years ago, I took my new\/old \u201cclassic\u201d 1965 Mercury Comet convertible to Jack Marwil, Mike\u2019s successor as Vinsetta proprietor, for maintenance and repairs.<\/p>\n

The especially curious twist to the latest episode in Vinsetta Garage\u2019s history is that one of the investors, perhaps the building\u2019s owner, is K. C. Crain, publisher of Autoweek<\/em> and scion of the Crain automotive publishing family (Automotive News), <\/em>founded by his grandfather (Advertising Age<\/em>) and headed by his father, Keith Crain.<\/p>\n

I heard months ago that K.C., or KC as he posts himself, had bought the Vinsetta Garage as a place to store his own collection of vintage cars. But he failed to return my calls requesting confirmation. I can now understand why, that he didn\u2019t want to let the cat out of the bag on his restaurant negotiations. However, I consider it bad practice for someone in the news business to stonewall media queries.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see if the restaurant going in to Vinsetta Garage will retain the building\u2019s name \u2013 as many expect — and have an automotive theme inside. Some years ago, there was a \u201cBodyshop\u201d restaurant in Ferndale, three miles south of Vinsetta Garage on Woodward.\u00a0 Diners would actually be seated in the shells of old cars.<\/p>\n

My daughter Penny and son-in-law Eric used to own and operate a restaurant called Kope\u2019s Garage in an upstate New York college town, with interior automotive d\u00e9cor featuring such things as posters (from my own collection) and discarded auto parts (mostly wheel covers) and a collection of license plates from across the continent and globe. They gave a free dessert to any customer who brought in a plate from a state or province they didn\u2019t have. The Vinsetta Garage office used to be decorated with Michigan plates from every year from its founding in 1919 to the present.<\/p>\n

I wonder if KC got the plates as part of the deal. If not, there\u2019s an idea for the new restaurant proprietor on Woodward.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Woodward DreamCruisers this coming weekend may find the going literally a bit rough. Several years ago, a new topping of asphalt was paved over the somewhat pockmarked surfaces of Woodward\u2019s eight lanes between Eight Mile and Pontiac. Unfortunately, that paving has become pot-holed with bumpy hot-patch repairs that provide bouncy riding for traffic.<\/p>\n

Times are tough for highway departments these days (Woodward is a Michigan State Highway), having to spread maintenance budgets even thinner than their pavements. The big bucks have to go for fixing deteriorating bridges, not mere cosmetic and riding comfort blemishes. This situation is exacerbated by the combination of reduced revenue from real estate taxes (values are down, you may have heard) and from per-gallon gasoline taxes because of both improved vehicle fuel economy and reduced miles driven on account of the economic situation.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, we await the opening of a new restaurant along the Woodward corridor. Vinsetta Garage may no longer be a repair shop, but the building should make an interesting restaurant venue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From service station to serving food? The nearly century-old — and now closed — Vinsetta Garage was an icon of the muscle car era and a familiar site along the route of the annual Woodward Dream Cruise. As TheDetroitBureau.com columnist Mike Davis notes, it may soon be reborn as a restaurant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":10690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41501"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41501"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=41501"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=41501"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=41501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}