It’s Dream Cruise day, so here’s the quintessential cruising song: “Fun, Fun, Fun” by the Beach Boys.  

Regular readers here at Mac’s Motor City Garage will recognize this CarTune as a repeat: It was originally featured on December 8, 2012. Sorry, but we had to circle back and hear this one again. The Woodward Dream Cruise is today, and there is no song that better captures the spirit of cruising than “Fun, Fun, Fun.”

A quick recap: Beach Boys Brian Wilson and Mike Love built the lyrics to “Fun, Fun, Fun” around an anecdote they picked up in a Salt Lake City radio station doing a publicity appearance. The station owner’s teen-aged daughter had taken his new Thunderbird to go to the library, but she got sidetracked. She and her friends went cruising to the local drive-in, and you know what happens next. Daddy took the T-Bird away.

Oddly enough, one of the great car radio songs of all time almost didn’t get recorded. Murry Wilson, the group’s manager and the Wilson brothers’ father, didn’t care for the teen disobedience portrayed in the lyrics. But the tune was completed on New Year’s Day and released early in 1964, where it raced up the charts. And fortunately for us today, there’s an energetic live performance taped in March of 1964 at the Burbank NBC studios. Have a great Dream Cruise.