When I got this car (1970 Dodge Coronet), I had just gotten my license and my step dad bought it. It was a total rust bucket; there was rust everywhere. He said, “I’m gonna fix this car up!” and I learned what the smell and look of Bondo was real fast. The next thing I knew, the whole thing was pulled together. You have to prime a car before you paint it, but it never got beyond the black primer stage. I drove that thing for years, into college where I went to Wayne State, and it had black primer the whole time. I loved this car; it was fun and fast. But it didn’t look nearly as nice as this one.
I first learned to drive on the streets of Belle Isle, where you couldn’t go fast enough to hurt anything, or do any damage to anyone or your car. Belle Isle has such a soft spot in my heart because it’s where that first feeling of independence really came from for me. You’re in a car, you’re in control of something that big and fast. That’s a feeling I’ll never forget; driving around Belle Isle, trying to do my best while someone’s in the passenger seat yelling at me for all the things I’m doing wrong. I remember all of it like it was yesterday.
Detroit is known for its ingenuity. You have to allow yourself to dream, and we’re reminded of the people who invented here that they were big dreamers. They made the impossible, possible. We live that today.
My stepfather used to race cars at the drag strip, so my sister and I would be there on the weekends playing in the dirt and being around all of these muscle cars. We grew up around it; the smell of it, the sound of it. Learning what it felt like to go fast. I love cars, and learned how to drive a manual transmission along the way, which I love. I’m a car girl from Detroit; not much of a stretch, I guess.
Detroit is known for its ingenuity – it’s the creative spirit behind all of the things, like cars and music, that have come out of Detroit that inspire me the most. Being around so many innovative people who are big thinkers. You have to allow yourself to dream, and a lot of times we don’t do that. We’re reminded by people who invented here that they were big dreamers. They thought about things that were possible, and they made it so. We live that today. We drive around our entire lives in these things that they created. None of that is lost on me.
Everyone went to the Auto Show. Talk about dreaming; you go to the Auto Show and dreamt of all of these cars you wanted to drive in. You sat in it, smelled it, touched it, felt it, and watched all of the innovation from year to year pass you by. It’s so incredible to see what transportation in a car looks like now compared to when the show started.