Cruise the Couve is all about the sights — the classic, cool and kooky cars that drive up and down Vancouver’s Main Street — but there is also a fair amount of sounds. Engines revving, horns honking, clunkers chug-a-lugging along, old tunes playing from cars and restaurants, and phrases like “whoa” and “that’s awesome” fill the air.
The sounds were a bit much for 3-year-old Cody Davis, who was sporting a pair of earmuffs during Saturday’s massively popular automobile event. For whatever reason, he prefers the sounds of monster trucks to the cacophony of Cruise the Couve noises. Some like rock music, some like classic; to each their own.
“He’s a car nut — lives for this stuff,” said his dad, Cory Davis.
The older Davis has a 1985 Chevy Crew Cab that he brought to Saturday’s event. The whole family can pile into the truck, which is his daily driver. He swapped out the original engine for a V-6 from a Dodge pickup. The diesel truck gets about 30 mpg, whereas the original got about eight, Davis said.
“It’s not the prettiest thing, but everywhere I go, someone’s always like, ‘Man, that’s cool,’ ” Davis said.
Trucks were a major presence at Saturday’s cruise. A bright purple 1970 Morris Mini pickup attracted a lot of attention and exclaims of “that’s so cute!”
Last year, Cruise the Couve replaced Cruisin’ the Gut, which was started in 2009 by Phil Medina. That means Saturday marked the 10th year of people swarming downtown and uptown Vancouver to see and be seen.
April and Tom Gredvig found a shaded spot on the sidewalk to watch the cars going by. They came to the event two years ago (when it was Cruisin’ the Gut) and said the only difference they noticed this year was a bigger police and volunteer presence. The weather was also cooler this year compared to two years ago. A nice breeze was blowing away the exhaust fumes, Tom Gredvig said.
But it’s not all about the cars.
“It’s almost as fun to see the dogs as the cars,” April Gredvig said as a Jeep drove by with a Chihuahua in the passenger’s lap.
Some of the fun is seeing the inventive things people do with cars. A souped-up PT Cruiser with butterfly door went up the drag. Another vehicle looked like something out of Mad Max. Car enthusiast Thomas Prill decided to put a trailer on his 2007 Pontiac Solstice, a sports car. He got a second Pontiac Solstice that had front-end damage and turned the back half of it into a matching trailer.
Prill missed Cruise the Couve last year because he took the Solstice on a family road trip. The trailer provided plenty of luggage space.
“We went to Canada all the way to Jasper with the trailer,” Prill said. “It was just gray when we went to Canada, but it got a lot of eyes even then.”
The car and trailer have racing stripes, and there are blue flames and a blue hitch on the trailer.
Cruise the Couve is a daylong event for car lovers that gets bigger every year and collects food donations for Share’s backpack program.
