Cover Story CRUISE from page 45 Glieberman often attends some of the specialty car shows around the country, such as the ones at Amelia Island, Ga., Pebble Beach, Calif., and Bay Harbor, Mich. (near Petoskey). Ruth Ann Lippitt Ruth Ann Lippitt of West Bloomfield takes turns with her husband, Allen, driving her 1978 Corvette in the Dream Cruise. "One year I drive and he waves to the spectators, and the next year he drives and I wave," explained Lippitt, who is a gemologist with Sidney Krandall & Sons Jewelers in Troy. "The cruise is really a lot of fun. You get to know all kinds of people, and we renew acquaintances every year. Sometimes we park the car for a while in a big display of Corvettes at Woodward and Maple — and we just walk around and talk to people." Lippitt got interested in old cars as a youngster, when her uncle took her for rides. She bought the Corvette — white with a red interior — sight unseen and proceeded to decorate her garage in an old car motif. It has a turquoise interior with a dis- play of wheel covers, old street signs and other appropriate old car paraphernalia. "A car like a '78 Corvette has to have a nice garage; the garage can't look shabby," she mused. She keeps the car there most of the time, driving it to work once every few weeks in the summer or tak- ing it for a spin at night. Scott Baker Scott Baker of West Bloomfield calls himself "one of those troublemakers" who drives cars up and down Woodward every night of the week leading up to the actual cruise. Not content just to cruise for one day, a number of car owners have jumped the gun in recent years and turned the event into a weeklong mini-cruise — much to the annoyance of cruise organizers who still are trying to keep it to just Saturdays. It's easy for Baker to cruise often because he owns 12 old Cadillacs, models ranging from 1940 to 1991, and he drives a different one every day of pre- cruise week. "The cruise is great; I wouldn't miss it for the world," exclaimed Baker, who's the CEO of the Dako Group, an engineering company in Troy that does business with the Big Three auto manufactur- ers. "I've been cruising most of the years, and you meet all kinds of people from around the world," he said. "I probably could walk from 10 Mile Road to Maple Road and know almost everyone along the way." Baker's pride and joy is a 1956 red-and-white Cadillac Coup de Ville that has only 15,000 miles on it, which he drives on the actual cruise day. He tries to drive each car about 500 miles a year, and keeps them in a special showroom at Dako. Baker's love for cars has rubbed off on his chil- dren. The single father's son, Zachary, 14, now has his own car detailing business, cleaning and sham- pooing cars for upward of $100 a vehicle. Zachary even has business cards, a Web site and a partner, and is earning money to help buy his own cars. Baker's other son, Isaac, 5, can identify any car on the road. His daughter, Jennifer, 18, is mildly 8/20 2004 46 interested. "She keeps reminding me she wants to get all of my cars eventually," Baker cracked. Joel Jacob Joel Jacob of West Bloomfield traces his love for cars back to when he was a teenager and often visited the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. He used $3,000 from his bar mitzvah money in 1972 to buy a 1965 Rolls Royce that cost $8,500, even though he couldn't drive it yet. His parents kicked in the rest of the money, and they drove the car until he was 16. He now also owns a 1931 Model A Ford, a 1953 Cadillac limousine and a 1977 Corvette. He bought the Model A from the Sloan GM Museum in Flint. "My wife Lauren was pregnant at the time, and it took a long time for us to drive the car home. We just barely made it before she went into labor," said Jacob, who recently became a father for the fifth time. Jacob usually piles Lauren and their five children into the Caddy limo and drives it in the Dream Cruise. Then they cap the day by visiting the Keego Harbor Dairy Queen, and drawing another crowd to inspect the limo. "I've always been fascinated by old cars, and the cruise is a classic car owner's dream," said Jacob, who owns Bottle Crew, a company in West Bloomfield that supplies bottles to com- mercial product manufacturers. Allan Grant "The Piranha Man" — that's how Allan Grant of Troy is known in the Dream Cruise, because he owns a black Piranha V- 8 convertible, one of only eight manufac- tured by the now-defunct Barracuda Enterprises in the late 1980s. The license plate even says "One of Eight." The car is based on a Mustang platform with a Cobra grille, and Grant usually drives it during the morning of the cruise, when the road is not too crowded yet. But he also often drives his 1976 Corvette in the cruise. "To give spectators a laugh, I get a friend to dress up as old Judge Augustus Woodward (for whom the road is named), and he sits in the car and waves to every- one," said Grant, who owns a Troy advertising agency. Born on Memorial Day, Grant, who has blue eyes and red hair, prides himself on being very patri- otic. He and a few buddies drove old cars together in the 1950s, joined the Marines together and now each owns some classic cars. "No one told us back then that Jews usually don't join the Marines," he reflected, "so we joined — and we were sent with 1,000 other Marines by President Eisenhower to quell an uprising in Lebanon. "We were always under fire by the rebels. But we didn't mind serving in the Marines because we felt we were being trained to help defend Israel if neces- sary." Grant usually can't wait for the Woodward cruise, so he also drives in a cruise in the Downriver area in July, and he writes a column for the monthly Cruise News, a 72-page newsletter launched in the early cruise days that goes out to about 10,000 cruise buffs in the Midwest. On the Woodward cruise day, Grant and others get together at the home of one of his old pals, Dr. Michael Sherbin of Bloomfield Hills, who owns a 1960s-era Rolls Royce.