On Woodward, Forever Young - NYTimes.com Paul Stenquist for The New York Times GENERATIONS Dave and Shirley Ziolkowski with their son, David, and the very modified 1988 Dodge Shadow. DETROIT - It's Dream Cruise week in metro Detroit, and Woodward Avenue, main street to the American auto industry for more than a century, is dancing to the rumbling beat of some 30,000 muscle cars, street rods and classics. A crowd estimated at more than one million has been gathering for days to witness Saturday's bumper-to-bumper parade of automotive excess. The revelers are celebrating what the Motor City does - and honoring the Woodward tradition of cruising, an automotive ritual of youth that's generations old and hit a peak in the 1950s and "60s, glory days for Detroit's industry. The first Woodward Dream Cruise - a fund-raiser for a soccer program - took to the streets in 1995 and proved far more popular than organizers had anticipated. It returned the next year and each year since. Today, it is a mammoth outdoor party that's a pilgrimage for enthusiasts who make the trek and a marketing showcase for automakers and sponsors. Among those enjoying the festivities are Dave and Shirley Ziolkowski. The Ziolkowskis are well into retirement; he's 70 and she's 66. Their home is a modest ranch house in the quiet suburb of Sterling Heights, and their car is a 1988 Dodge Shadow, just the sort of thrifty transportation one might expect to find in the garage of seniors. But the Ziolkowski's Shadow shares little with the 93-horsepower front-drive compact that Chrysler built in 1987-94. In the lexicon of hot rodders, it's a pro-street custom, with flaming-red sheet metal that conceals a professional-grade racecar frame and a brawny Chrysler V-8. Subtlety is not part of the package: the carburetors, topped by a dragster-style air scoop, poke through the hood. Rear tires 18 1/2 inches wide are tucked into wheel housings that intrude on the space once occupied by the car's cozy back seat. A pair of "wheelie bars" - steel tubes with small wheels at their far ends - sprout from the rear, poised to keep the front wheels close to the ground on an all-out run through the gears. Though the Ziolkowskis have not probed the car's limits, this Shadow has enough V-8 horsepower to reach supercar top speeds. It's the kind of vehicle every retiree should have for trips to the Social Security office - providing that office isn't distant. "We don't drive far," Mrs. Ziolkowski said. The car is deafening. Why would these sober-minded retirees build a car that flouts every notion of sensible transportation? The answer is the story of the Dream Cruise: a tale of what once was. For this couple, it began on a spring evening in 1964 when 21-year-old Mr. Ziolkowski was cruising Detroit's Gratiot Avenue in his potent 425-horsepower "64 Ford Galaxie. He planned to drop by Jupiter's Drive In, then drive north to the A&W on Conner Avenue before motoring over to Woodward, the Totem Pole, the Varsity and finally Ted's - a long-gone Bloomfield Township drive-in that was once the end point of the cruise. That evening, Shirley Bieke, a 17-year-old high school senior, was dateless. So she and a friend hiked three miles from their Detroit neighborhood to the A&W. Along the way, they enjoyed adult beverages - illicitly. But after a couple of hours, the effects of the alcohol made any thoughts of walking home too daunting. In those innocent times, Ms. Bieke stuck out her thumb. That's when Mr. Ziolkowski drove by and gave the girls a ride home. Before long he asked Shirley out, and less than a year later they were Mr. and Mrs. True products of a town that revered cars the way Brooklyn loved the Dodgers, they cruised in the musclebound Ford for a few years. Then came a baby, grown-up responsibilities - and a practical sedan. The life changes didn't matter so much, as it turned out, because by the mid-1970s Woodward and Gratiot had largely gone silent. Engines choked by pollution controls, strife in Detroit and a multitude of other factors killed the cruise. Before long, many of the popular drive-ins were bulldozed.