Article by Lucas Phan and Photos by Lisa Molzon

Due to the COVID resurgence earlier this year, the 2021 Spring Tour was the toughest event I have organized so far.  All the local parks were crowded and finding a restaurant to host for lunch or dinner was nearly impossible.  We started mapping the route early in the year, but had to make many changes and adjustment to comply with our state COVID regulations. 

For this year, we decided to forgo our typical pre-arranged dinner as no restaurant could commit to host our group.  With that in mind, we proposed a two-segment drive where the participants could choose to drive either one segment or both.  Each segment was about 1.5 hours of drive time. We had 63 cars and 84 people participate in the event, a much larger turnout when compared to recent Spring Tours.

We were fortunate that both Zingerman’s Roadhouse in Ann Arbor and Roger’s Roost in Sterling Heights let us use their facility as starting and ending locations.

With these two restaurants in mind, we decided to start our Spring Tour at Zingerman’s Roadhouse.  Registration opened at 11 AM and vehicles in the first segment of Spring Tour departed 1.30 PM.  Many of the participants decided to have lunch at Zingerman’s Roadhouse prior to the tour.

We divided the cars into five drive groups and we were blessed to have willing leaders for each group.  Thank you group leaders Chris Bohr, Howard Gilson, Andrew Vincent, Lisa Molzon, Andrew Sasyk, Walt/Sabrina Crump, Mark/Rene Vander Eyk and Jim Williams.  

The first drive segment took us along scenic Huron River Drive, the famous Car and Driver test loop in Hell/Pickney (Hankerd and Hadley roads) and a relaxing cruise around Portage, Bass, Zukey and Whitmore Lakes.  We ended the first tour segment at Top Gun Incorporated in Novi.  Top Gun is an automotive paint repair shop that specializes in minor paint repairs like chips, scratches, dings, dents and damaged bumpers.  They have been a long time SEMPCA advertiser and supporter.  Top Gun owners, Bruce and Diane, hosted us and provided paint repair estimate during our 1.5 hours stop at their facility.

Our tour second segment started at Top Gun Incorporated and from there we drove north to through Milford and Davisburg ending at Roger’s Roost Restaurant in Sterling Heights.  We were blessed with exceptional weather on the first segment but our luck with good weather ended there; a heavy downpour started right when we were about to leave on our second segment drive.

We arrived at Roger’s Roost at 6 PM, which was just right for dinner.  John Dorscht welcomed us at Roger’s Roost.  We enjoyed the awesome dinner there and couldn’t have asked for better outcome.  As we always say ““IT’S NOT JUST THE CARS, IT’S THE PEOPLE”.

Lucas Phan (Event Chair) Giving directions during the Driver’s Meeting

Bill Kraus with mom Rebecca (and Mackenzie in the car)

Howard Gilson (SEM-PCA Vice-President), Andrew Vincent & Chris Bohr

Patrick Coleman and First Lady Sabrina Crump

The Gennari Family

New Members- George Stephens, Jim Holland, Bas Timmers, James Santos and Christian Santos

George Stephen with his Macan S

Kiro & Paula Trendov with Tom Grabowski

Bruce and Diane Antaya from Top Gun welcomes SEM Spring Drive participants in their facility

Porsche at Top Gun Inc. (end of segment 1 and starting location of segment 2)

Porsche at Roger’s Roost (end of segment 2)