Five years ago, I rode around Plymouth in Margaret Dunning’s classic Cadillac for a Detroit Free Press story. Then, Margaret Dunning was 96 years old. I remember being thrilled as she turned the big Caddy north onto Sheldon and, with no cops cars in sight, floored it. Man, did we take off! That was Margaret Dunning in 2006. The New York Times caught her at 101. She told the Times she still changes her own oil. Hmmm. She told me she quit changing oil when she hit 90. Oh, well. Here’s my August 13, 2006 take on Margaret when she was 96, reprinted with permission of the Detroit Free Press.
Headline: STILL CRUISING AT 96
Sub-Head: SHE’S NO MUSTANG SALLY, BUT WATCH HER DUST IN THAT ’66 CADDY
Byline: BY JOEL THURTELL
Pub-Date: 8/13/2006
Memo: PLYMOUTH – CANTON – NORTHVILLE.
Margaret Dunning quit changing the oil in her cars when she turned 90. She found a young man to do it.
“The oil ran just as well, but I didn’t,” said Dunning.
The young man is Steve LaDouceur of White Lake. He’s 58.
LaDouceur tinkered with Dunning’s cars. He couldn’t help being impressed with the pair of Cadillac convertibles parked in the garage behind her house in Plymouth. He thought of the Woodward Dream Cruise. “Why don’t you go?” he said.
There’s a yellow 1953 model and a 1975 two-tone tan and brown one. Nearby, there’s a gold 1966 Cadillac DeVille, a black 1931 Ford Model A pickup truck and the pièce de résistance — a cream and black 1930 Packard Model 740 straight eight convertible.
For the last five years, Dunning, now 96, has been doing the Dream Cruise.
She’ll be there Saturday, too, in her gold ’66 Cadillac.
“What do you do?” I wondered. This small, white-haired lady looked at me like I’d poured oil in her radiator.
“You drive up and down Woodward, that’s all,” said Dunning. “It’s just a cruise.”
But if you’re Margaret Dunning, there’s more to it.
LaDouceur recalls driving the ’66 Caddy with Dunning riding when a man in another car asked him something technical about the car. It’s hers, LaDouceur said — and Dunning took over. She pulled out photos of her other cars and for several blocks, every time the two cars stopped at a red light, she leaned out the window to show off pictures of her cars.
She doesn’t let anyone touch the Packard that won the first perfect score from the Classic Car Club of America: “Twenty-two coats of hand-rubbed lacquer, and I’m very fussy about anybody putting their hands on there.”
As for the knobs on the Packard dashboard, “That’s all ivory,” she says. “That’s not make-believe.”
She started collecting cars around 1940. She actually owns more classic cars than the five in her garage. The sixth car is her everyday 2003 Cadillac; she calls it her “plastic bubble.” Then there’s a Model T on loan to a friend in Colorado. And the 1906 Model N Ford she donated to a museum.
Why the fascination with cars?
“I love to take stuff apart,” she said at the end of July before setting out on a trip to Germany.
Birth of a car lover
She was born in 1910 in Redford Township. Her father had a big farm. She was an only child.
Her parents told her how Henry Ford, a good friend of her father, Charles Dunning, would visit the family farm in Redford when she was an infant.
“He went over and looked in my buggy and looked down at me and said, “Well, Charlie, you’ve got a nice baby,’ ” Dunning said.
She helped her dad fix tractors, cars, farm implements. She took cars apart and put them back together. Her garage has a shop where she works on her cars. There are signs marked — only slightly tongue-in-cheek — “paint department” and “parts department.”
On this day, she takes her visitors around in the ’66 Caddy, the car she brings to the Dream Cruise. A sign hangs from the back seat: “Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.”
This is a long, long car. After the ride, she finds her dad’s old cloth tape measure. Sixteen feet from rear fin to front bumper.
Hard to maneuver, says LaDouceur. She was upset, he says, when her nephew, or maybe it was a cousin, backed the gold Caddy out the driveway and all the way across the street, hitting a fence. Scraped the paint. “She was crushed.” LaDouceur touched it up.
She backs the ’66 Caddy quickly, like someone who’s been doing it for, well, let’s see — her mother built the house facing Penniman Avenue around 1926, when Dunning was 16. Her first car was a 1923 Ford Model T.
“One reason I don’t have cars with cranks any more is my back is crankier than the cars,” Dunning says.
On the road
The Caddy cruises along Farmer Street. She points out a worn old wooden building. It was a car factory, she says. Alder cars, about 1915. Ever heard of them? Over there, by the railroad tracks, the McLarens sold coal and feed.
Drops splash on the windshield. “It’s raining, folks.”
She whips past the Dunning Memorial Building, named for her. She donated money to this home of the Plymouth Historical Society.
“I paid for every brick,” she says.
She swings down Main Street. On Ann Arbor Trail, she points out the McLaren house. That’s where she got the ’66 Caddy, she says. A high point of her life.
“Twenty-five years ago, Mrs. McLaren called.
” ‘Margaret, you know I’m a good friend of your mother’s and I have a favor to ask. I still have my Cadillac.’ I said, ‘You still have your Cadillac!’ I couldn’t believe it. People wanted to pick it up for nothing. They were trying to get it for $300 or $500. There are no fools in this town.
” ‘What is it worth?’ she wanted to know. I said, ‘I’m interested in buying it, but I won’t put a dollar sign on it.’ ”
During the telling of this story, Dunning heads north on Sheldon. It’s a wide street with a 40 m.p.h. limit, normally, but there are schools, and the limit drops to 25 there. She floors it. The Caddy surges up Sheldon.
“I got a ticket for going 70 in this,” she boasts.
The Caddy slows. Back to her tale of the golden Caddy, Dunning says, “Mrs. McLaren said, ‘I don’t think you would be interested. It’s got almost 20,000 miles on it.’ ”
“I drooled all the way. I hotfooted it over there and couldn’t get the door open fast enough. It had a coat of dust on it, but it was just as clean as it could be.”
The drive is over. Back in her garage, I notice a citizens band radio.
“Oh yes, oh yes, I run the CB. That’s fun. I was taking my Model T out West one time and there were some truckers coming this way and one said, ‘Oh look, oh look, oh look – that’s an old Dodge.’
“I came on and said, ‘Dodge never made a car as good as that. That’s a Model T.’ ”
Contact JOEL THURTELL at 248-351-3296 or thurtell@freepress.com.
Edition: METRO FINAL
Section: CFP; COMMUNITY FREE PRESS
Page: 1
