Hundreds of new and vintage cars rode out of Riverfront Festival Plaza at around 6pm Friday for the third annual Ouellette Car Cruise.
A lot of unique rides made it to the show but a yellow 1967 Volkswagen Beetle stood out a little more than the others, attracting young and old for a photo op. An old punch buggy isn't rare in itself, it's the body that draws people in because you can see through it.
Everything from military vehicles, dune buggies and hot rods, to modern muscle cars and rare sedans on display @
’s Riverfront Festival Plaza for the 2018
’s Ouellette Car Cruise.
— Gord Bacon (@baconAM800)Windsor's Ashley Mentley and her father Brian have been a part of the cruise here in Windsor and many others, showing off a body that looks like a Beetle, but is made of around a quarter mile of wrought iron. Mentley tells AM800 News her father — who's a diesel engine mechanic — built the car to honour his friend's wife when she lost her battle of cancer 14-years ago.
"We scrapped the body because it was completely rusted and then he made a new one completely by hand out of wrought iron," she says. "He hand bent and welded all of it."
She says the VW means a lot to her family and the attention it stirs-up at every show preserves the memory of their family friend.
"The number of people who tell us that it's not the Woodward Dream Cruise until they've seen the yellow [VW] Beetle, we hear that all the time," says Mentley. "That's just the coolest thing to hear, that they look for us every year because we go every year and that's pretty cool."
It's not a typical show car, and that's the way the Mentley's like it.
"You want to sit in it and take a picture? The kids love it, it's not like a typical show car that people are polishing and trying to get ready for car show day," she says. "He [Brian] drives it every day from Amherstburg to Windsor, it is what it is."
Mentley says the VW has been driven across Canada for charity on at least one occasion, an impressive feat for a car that only has a windshield to protect passengers from the elements.