Woodies and Friends in Ford Town

By Ron Steck

I recently went to Dearborn, Michigan to attend the National Woodie Club’s very first National Meet. The meet was held September 30 through October 1 at the Edward hotel in Dearborn.  I trailered my 1941 Ford Station Wagon to the meet, arriving there Friday morning.  There were several cars there already that had also been trailered.  I talked to several of the other people who had come from other states and also one individual who had his car shipped from California and was going to drive it back.

The National Woodie Club consists of about 2,700 members from all parts of the country.  The Woodie Club has no restrictions on car manufacturer it is as long as it is Woodie.  The cars can be stock or modified, including resto-mods, hot rods, 350 Chevy in a Ford, etc.

We had reservations at Ford’s Garage, a new restaurant in town.  It had Ford decoration throughout the entire restaurant.  A few of us got together later on in the evening.

Saturday morning we were able to drive over in front of Henry Ford’s house to get a photo of our vehicles if we wished.  After that we drove to nearby Ford Field Park where we had a meet with all the other members that were able to make it into town.  There were a lot of people who came out to see the cars as a lot of them had never seen a Woodie. There ended up being 42 Woodies in all that showed up for this first meet that the National Woodie Club had ever had.  I would say that there were maybe 8 cars that were still stock.  There were some interesting vehicles there, one being a Dodge Power Wagon from Indiana.  They had a 50-50 raffle, sold tickets for various items and presented 7 awards.

Saturday evening there was a board meeting and anyone who wanted to attend was welcome.  I chose to go to see what the club was planning for future meets and to learn a little more about the club.  It was brought up about having another meet next year in another location.  I brought up the idea of having an Eastern, Central, and Western Meet as we do in our club.  It would also be good to have it in a historical area. 

The remainder of the evening a few of us got together to talk about cars and other things.  Some of the people went to some of the Henry Ford attractions in the area for the remainder of the meet.  There have been a lot of new restaurants and stores in the area as well.  I am looking forward to going to our meet next year and staying at the same hotel.  I chose not to visit the Ford attractions this time, but I will have more time for that at our 2018 Grand National meet.