Roadkill Nights festival gives Dodge a venue to showcase hp

DETROIT — Tim Kuniskis remembers when the idea of staging an old-school, pop-up drag-racing spectacle sounded nuts — even to Dodge, the unapologetic purveyor of American muscle.

It was the summer of 2015, a month before the inaugural Roadkill Nights Powered by Dodge event took over the parking lot of the abandoned Pontiac Silverdome in suburban Detroit and turned the venue into a festival headlined by drag races, Hellcat thrill rides, vehicle displays and a celebrity appearance from "Fast N' Loud" star Richard Rawlings.

Looking back, the setup looked like a stroke of genius. But just weeks before the first gathering, born out of a partnership with Dodge and Motor Trend Group media company, uncertainty was in the air.

For one, Dodge was still unsure of a location, in addition to wondering if it could legally pull it off. And Kuniskis, FCA's head of passenger cars in North America, said he wondered how many people would show up.

Attendance ended up not being a problem. The first Roadkill Nights drew more than 10,000 people and kick-started an annual tradition for Dodge. After the first year, the festivities moved to the M1 Concourse, a racetrack and luxury garage complex, with drag races on historic Woodward Avenue, a major Detroit-area thoroughfare. This year's event takes place Friday and Saturday.

Roadkill Nights is much more organized than during that first year. Drag racers now plan their schedules around it, and the city of Pontiac uses the two-day muscle-car summit to kick off a weeklong automotive celebration leading up to the annual Woodward Dream Cruise. Roadkill Nights is now a family affair that has added luster with celebrity appearances.

This year's list of celebs is the biggest yet, with pro wrestler Bill Goldberg among those expected to show up.

Kuniskis said a key to the event is that Dodge hasn't excluded other brands from the high-octane festivities.

"That's why you see the race cars are not all Dodges. That's why you see a lot of people that come to this event, they own Fords and they own Chevys," Kuniskis said. "We wanted this open to anybody that is into performance cars, anybody that's into muscle cars. We wanted to bring them in because that's how we expand the brand. We're not selling to the same people over and over again. We're trying to bring new people in the fold."

When ideas were thrown around in 2015, Kuniskis said the brand was rolling out Hellcat-powered models and looking to express itself through experiential marketing. The brand didn't want a tame affair with product specialists simply handing out brochures in a small tent.

Someone had the idea to rent the Silverdome parking lot, a suggestion Kuniskis said was "crazy enough to actually work."

The vast stadium lot — most recently used to store thousands of diesel cars that Volkswagen had to buy back — had some rough areas, but Kuniskis said the brand found a section that was usable for a custom one-eighth-mile drag strip. Although the team didn't start publicizing the event until about a week ahead of time, a roster of drag-racing gladiators in an assortment of vehicles filled out the slate.

The first Roadkill Nights was highlighted by a grudge race between Rawlings' Gas Monkey Garage crew and the "Roadkill" TV series. The competitors had a week to outfit a vehicle of their choice with a Hellcat engine. The Gas Monkey collective won with its 1967 Dodge Dart, topping the "Roadkill" team's 1968 Dodge Charger.

More than 200 classic and modern muscle cars drag-raced that day.

"We didn't know who would show up on short notice, so we literally accepted anybody that would bring their cars," Kuniskis said.

"There were some cars that, quite honestly, they scared me how fast they were on the track," he said. "And the track was rough, not potholes, but had some dips in it and cars were bottoming out because they were so fast. We were looking for old-school grassroots. That was old-school grassroots."

The transition to drag racing on Woodward wasn't a breeze, either. Kuniskis said most on the planning team thought it would be impossible to shut down a section to do it. They had to persuade Pontiac city officials, who Kuniskis said were skeptical at first yet ultimately relented.

The Woodward racing, in tandem with the M1 Concourse event, has made Roadkill Nights even bigger. Last year's event brought in more than 44,000 people over two days, quadrupling the initial one-day bash, and drew 4 million viewers for a livestream.

Supporters of Roadkill Nights point out that the event provides a legal and safe opportunity for drag racing. In June, videos of Dodge owners illegally blocking off a Detroit freeway to do doughnuts in a Charger Hellcat and other high-powered cars spread across social media.

Kuniskis said he wants such thrill-seeking to stay within controlled environments.

"We make a big point to tell people that this is how you should experience the power that we make available to them. Not on the street — in a drag-strip environment," Kuniskis said. "This is a full-on, professionally run drag strip that just happens to be in your backyard. And that's the way you should enjoy this power."