FERNDALE, MI – Each year, the Woodward Dream Cruise becomes a destination getaway weekend for enthusiasts from all over the world. A mega-cruise event like this is truly for everyone, from car-loving young families to the most avid of gearheads. For Ford fans, there’s one special place to be along Woodward Avenue on cruise-day Saturday, and that’s a place known as “Mustang Alley.”
Well, it’s actually a street and not an alley. But Mustang is such an important icon for Ford Motor Company that a whole road that intersects with Woodward at the beginning of the cruise route gets blocked off to allow Blue Oval enthusiasts a long stretch of pavement to display their beloved Mustangs. With Mustang Alley parking on a first-come, first-serve basis, Mustang owners start pouring in for the closest parking to Woodward as early as 4 a.m.! There are Mustangs lined down adjacent city streets waiting for entry onto East Nine Mile Road in the city of Ferndale that is magically transformed into Mustang Alley each year. A flood of the iconic American pony cars enters the roadway at 8 a.m. and are all slowly guided to parking spots on both sides of Nine Mile Road by the Mustang Alley volunteers.
With Shelby American hosting an event on the West Coast this year, an area that they usually held in Mustang Aley near the city’s parking garage dubbed “The Snake Pit,” was this time reserved for members of the Mustang Owner’s Club of SouthEastern Michigan (MOCSEM), along with some participants of the Mohawk Track Experience that was held earlier in the week. (MOCSEM’s normal spot on West Nine Mile Road was filled with Ford Broncos this year, so all you had to do was cross Woodward to switch up the Ford vibe here). The rest of Mustang Alley was filled end-to-end with some 800-900 Mustangs of all years, types and models. As always, there’s an overflow of Mustangs that couldn’t even fit on Nine Mile Road and were delegated to some side streets to get in. You honestly could’ve checked out many of the Mustang-filled side streets and found a mini car show on each of them! After 30 years, Mustang Alley remains the popular epicenter for the Ford faithful’s footprint during the Dream Cruise.
We recently showed you some of the 2025 model lineup that Ford brought out for display in Mustang Alley, led by the brand-new, recently released flagship, the Mustang GTD. With the exclusivity of this high-end, low-production Mustang race car, the GTD is more of a Mustang unicorn than a pony. There were no less than three GTD’s in attendance on Mustang Alley, all parked in different spots for Ford fans to get up close and personal with this very special and rarely seen Mustang. But for us, it was the many versions of all seven generations of the Ford Mustang that brought us both surprise and delight as we walked up and down Nine Mile Road. After taking photos of Mustangs for the entire mile-long stretch, take a look at some of the Mustangs and Mustang Alley attractions that stood out to us at this year’s event in our photo gallery:
FORD RACING PHOTOS / COURTESY JOE DELADVITCH
