“Now some guys, they just give up living

And start dying little by little, piece by piece.

Some guys come home from work and wash up

And go racin’ in the street.”

—Bruce Springsteen, “Racing in the Street”

To hear the heart of the Woodward Dream Cruise beating, listen to the V8 roar from 32-year-old Will Lawson’s customized two-tone ’79 Buick Skylark or the two 12-inch subwoofers thumping in the trunk of 19-year-old Alex Bui’s tuned 2006 Honda Civic.

The drivers and the cars may not be what you expect in the muscle-car-dominated Dream Cruise on Saturday, but they’ll be there. Will, Alex and their buddies are brothers to the oil-stained kids who built Woodward’s legend tuning up Mustangs and Impalas in the 1960s.

They’re also the car buffs whose passion will carry the Dream Cruise and the auto industry into the future.

“Some of these kids would rather put a kit on their car than eat,” said 62-year-old Jay Kalish, who grew up cruising Woodward and racing on I-75. Kalish and his son Ben own Street Legal Customs on Woodward in Royal Oak, Mich., an accessories and performance shop where compact-car tuners like Bui hang out and buy parts alongside owners of exotic European cars.

“These kids are exactly the same as we were,” said Jay Kalish, who grew up just off Woodward in Huntington Woods, Mich. “We didn’t have any money, so we worked on what we had.”

That’s what Lawson, 26-year-old Derek James, and the rest of the 25-member Yaktown Cruisers — the name is a nickname for Pontiac, Mich. — do most nights at Total Auto Care, an auto shop just off Woodward on the south side of Pontiac.

“Whatever money I get, I take it and do what’s next on my list for the car,” said Lawson, who drives a truck for Allied Waste Services.

Lawson bought his Skylark for $900 in 2000. He has spent about $7,000 on modifications that include scissors doors, a Chevrolet small-block V8, new transmission, Posi-Traction rear differential, racing seats and a floor shifter.

“You get more satisfaction doing the work yourself,” Lawson said. “We call the guy with the slowest car the grocery-getter. I ain’t going to be the grocery-getter.”

Like a bookend near the south end of the Dream Cruise route, Bui and other young car enthusiasts hang out at Street Legal Customs.

Bui works as a cashier at Meijer in White Lake and takes classes at Oakland University. He bought his Civic new in 2006 and has spent more than $3,000 on modifications that include a new intake and exhaust system for extra power, suspension changes that lowered the car 1 1/2 inches and a Sony sound system.

Bui and his friends use the Internet to set up car meets around Oakland County. “There’s something going on just about every night,” he said. “You pass the word, and there’s 20 people in a parking lot comparing cars.

“I always see something new that I want, and I save the money so I can pay it off when I buy it. I don’t like credit cards, but I really like the people. Everybody who’s out there is interested in cars, so you automatically have something to talk about.”

Forty years ago and today, cruising Woodward is as much about the friends you make as the car you drive.

The Yaktown Cruisers work on their cars at home and at Total Auto Care, where the owner, 62-year old Gene Ross, doubles as Zen master and mechanical guru and preps his 1970 Pontiac GTO for the Dream Cruise.

“Hey Gene, rubbin’ it don’t make it any faster,” James joked as Ross polished the GTO Monday evening.

James, a mechanic at Veolia Environmental Services in Pontiac, has invested nearly $9,000 in the blue 1988 Chevrolet Caprice he bought in 2000 for $1,100.

“I’ve always liked Caprices,” he said of the big sedan that now has a 383-cubic-inch V8, a lift kit, upsized tires and gleaming rims with spinners. Like a lot of the Yaktown Cruisers, James took this week off from work to prepare his car and enjoy the cruise in front of Total Auto Care each evening. “I’m a diehard Chevy guy. We’re GM all the way.”

In grease-stained T-shirts, eating carryout pizza in Total Auto’s parking lot, the Yaktown Cruisers are as far from the Hawaiian-shirt crowd lining Woodward in Birmingham as 2008 is from 1968. They’re the heart of what happens tonight, though, and they live it all summer.

GM cars from the ’80s and ’90s are easy to find, reliable and easy to restore, Ross said.

They travel to local car meets and cruise Woodward together. “We don’t stop anyplace unless there’s room for everybody,” James said.

“It’s a family. We don’t leave anybody behind.”

The Woodward family reunion is tonight. Everybody’s welcome.