I think there is something about Detroit that brings automotive lovers together. It is quite evident from the time it takes to organize a meet. It happened last year in 2019 and something similar happened in 2020 as well.
After organizing > 100 Team BHP meets in the last decade, I know exactly the pain and process of organizing meets. We started the conversation of this meet on November 22, 2020 and we had an actually meet happen within 2 weeks with BHPians driving all the way to Detroit from as far as New Jersey, Chicago and Pittsburgh which I guess was possible due to the Detroit vibe
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It’s difficult to get a meet organized in our homeland in such a short period as deliberations and planning itself takes a few weeks. Our meet happening in 2 weeks is nothing short of luck and sheer determination of all who joined (9 cars and 11 people).
Kudos to the spirit of Detroit and all folks who made this meet happen successfully
As soon as Nikhil initiated the meet, we quickly created an offline group and started deliberations on meeting point as well as the final destination with multiple suggestions pouring in.
There was one tempting option of driving to Michigan International Speedway (MIS) which hosts Nascar each year and is also the fastest Nascar track in US. Coincidentally on the same day of meet planned, MIS had a tempting event of donating a toy and drive on MIS track for 3-laps at highway speeds. Woah! That would have been an awesome experience but, the problem was it was 60 miles ( from the meeting point) exactly in the opposite direction to original destination planned which was Port Huron so we dropped the idea as it would be too much of driving.
I started from home along with a non-tbhpian Dilip who lives in same community (Driving a supercharged 3.5 Liter Jaguar XE to pick up Deep (Mpower) as he packed his cars (BMW’s) for winter. He arrived in his Cruze and we took a quick snap with our 3 cars together in the Meijer parking lot where we left his car before heading together with Deep riding with me.
We decided to meet at the iconic location of Fiat Chrysler Automotive (FCA) campus in Auburn Hills, Michigan and lined up our cars o take few pictures outside the FCA Museum (You can see Maserati written on the building in some of the cars line-up pics).
After spending some time taking pics and all trembling in the cold, vj123 took us to John Dodge’s home (owner of Dodge Motor Company which is now under the umbrella of FCA) which is somewhere inside the FCA campus which is massive campus and covered over at least 10 miles radius.
After taking a few pics at this memorable location, we headed to another location on a golf course which was beautiful for another photoshoot before heading to a local McD outlet where we picked up our burgers to have it on the go. From here on, we drove the 65 miles to Port Huron non-stop. Port Huron is one of the borders to Canada (I think probably the closest border to Canada). Even Detroit downtown is the border to Canada but, it is slightly longer to cross over (maybe ~2 miles) but, Port Huron seems to be less than a mile to the other side (If the weather is good, I can swim across ... LOL!).
We enjoyed the views by the lake in freezing weather (it was -3C) and my hands literally were burning from cold after taking the video at the Port Huron water-side where we all huddled up for some chit chat and pics.
We drove around a bit in the beautiful quaint town (summers is usually awesome in Port Huron) we stopped one last time near where all boats were stacked up for a final shoot before calling our goodbyes and heading our own way.
Highlights:
A) Rohit’s M5 with a V10 510 BHP engine. Sweet!
B) PJ’s Dodge Scatpack with a Semi Engine-485 horses ( I am a fan of these muscle cars).
C) Manindra’s lovely new Tesla Y.
D) Last but, not the least the cutie pie of the whole rides (Mazda MX5 RF)- Smallest car came from furthest distance-NJ!!!
It was a fantastic meet which clubbed a real drive to make it a complete meet. A big shout out to all folks who came from other states and thanks to vj123 for being the local guide and taking us to some nice memorable automotive historical locations.
P.S: Sorry, I'm a bit lazy to title each of these phone pics but, hopefully you will get the sequence and where it was clicked based on the report above...Also, you can click the pics to see the larger version
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P.S 2 : Detroit guys, lets plan a meet in winters, maybe even a house meet for dinner or something would be great.