The 24th-annual CANAM Tour will bring about 32 Model T Fords to Belleville and Van Buren Township this weekend, May 20-22.
The cars will be on display from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday at Victory Park at Five Points in Belleville.
This is a combined tour of two Model T clubs, the Casual T’s of Southeast Michigan and the Ontario Region Model T’s. They both are chapters of the Model T Ford Club International.
For the tour, the cars’ owners are about evenly split: half Americans, half Canadians.
Each year the clubs take turns hosting the event. This weekend is celebrated as Victoria Day weekend in Canada with Monday as a holiday.
When the clubs tour in the U.S., the Victoria Day weekend is chosen so the Canadians have an extra day to get back home.
On the alternate years when the tour is in Canada, they choose the Memorial Day weekend, so the Americans have an extra day for travel.
Event chairman Fred L. Verbridge of Brighton said this year’s tour will be held in Belleville, with the Holiday Inn Express on the North Service Drive as the host hotel.
He said adventurous members will be camping at the Wayne County Fair Campgrounds on Quirk Road, just around the corner from the hotel.
Members of the two clubs will travel from their homes – some arriving in their Model T’s and some bringing the vehicles in trailers. They will meet at the hotel on Friday and parade to Victory Park in Belleville. There is no charge to view the vintage vehicles.
The Saturday tour has a short route of 89 miles or the long route of 103 miles.
It starts off driving into Belleville on Main Street, turning on High Street and then heading onto West Huron River Drive.
The route goes to Saline, with refreshments at Mill Pond Park, and then on to Chelsea, with lunch, shopping and a tour of the Teddy Bear Factory. Then, on to Dexter and a visit to the Dexter Historical Museum, and then to Ann Arbor and stops at the Leslie Science and Nature Center Raptor Display.
Then, it’s on to Ypsilanti, with stops at Depot Town for shopping, the Automobile Heritage Museum and Firehouse Museum and back to the Holiday Inn Express.
Verbridge said club members won’t be able to fit in all the stops and will have to pick and choose.
On Sunday, the tour leaves around 9:30 a.m., going north on Belleville Road heading to Mill Race Village in Northville. The 57-mile tour goes through Farmington Hills, and Northville, before heading back to the Holiday Inn Express in Van Buren Township.
Club members said the management of the hotel has been very accommodating and plans to invite the public to the Holiday Inn Express to look at the parked vintage cars.
Jerry Van Ooteghem, president of the Casual T’s Chapter, said most club members own more than one Model T. He said if the weather is nasty on Friday, he’ll bring his sedan, with roll-up windows. If it’s nice weather, he’ll bring his two-seater roadster, an open car. He plans to drive to Belleville from his home in Grosse Pointe Woods by way of Michigan Avenue.
Van Ooteghem said each year they pick a different town and they hadn’t been to Belleville yet, so they chose this area. He said Belleville is somewhat rural once you get out of town and they can ride the back roads without bothering too many people.