Gallery: Flint’s Back to the Bricks Classic Car Show

Detroit might be the Motor City, but it did not give birth to General Motors. No, what had been the world's largest automaker was founded an hour to the northwest on Sept. 16, 1908, in Flint, a gritty town that has experienced more than a hundred years of economic expansion and brutal contraction at the hands of an increasingly global automotive industry. Despite decades of hard times (well documented in Michael Moore's 1989 film, Roger & Me) and water quality issues, the town is gradually coming back and has fantastic museums in a thoroughly modern cultural center.

What hasn't changed is Flint's love for a good car show—an extended one called Back to the Bricks that began this year with Tune Up parties as early as Aug. 7. The Main Event Week had rolling cruises, concerts—even a drive-in movie night. All of it culminated this past Saturday with Back to the Bricks, a massive, free car show running about a half-mile on the brick-paved Saginaw Street right through this historic downtown.

A short walk from Saginaw Street across the Flint River puts you at GM's recently refurbished Factory One, which William C. Durant and J. Dallas Dort began leasing in 1886 to manufacture road carts—the infancy of GM. And right outside Factory One was, appropriately, a show of classic Buicks as well as a Corvette reunion.

Hosting Back to the Bricks on the third Saturday in August conflicts directly with another car show down the road: the Woodward Dream Cruise, which draws 40,000 classic (and not-so classic) cars and about a million spectators to suburban Detroit. On Dream Cruise Saturday, a drive north to Flint for Back to the Bricks is a much better option.