It was intended to be a freeway; here is narrative from michiganhighways.org:

While the original Davison Expwy constructed in the 1940s only ran a short distance, as the Detroit area expressway system was being proposed and laid out during the 1950s and 1960s, the tiny Davison was destined to become part of a much longer freeway. Plans had been seriously considered to extend the Davison westerly to the proposed Jeffries Expwy at US-16/Grand River Ave, then westerly along Schoolcraft Ave into Livonia, as well as extending the freeway easterly to Mt Elliot Ave and looping around City Airport and down to the proposed "Crosstown Expwy," which is now I-94/Edsel Ford Frwy. As some of the originally proposed routes were gradually excluded, the Davison was to run westerly to hook into a realigned Jeffries Frwy and easterly to the proposed Mound Freeway, running north-south along Mound Rd from the Edsel Ford in Detroit to the M-53 freeway in Sterling Heights. The I-96/Jeffries and I-696/Walter P Reuther Freeways were even built with these connections in mind. Construction on the Davison never progressed east of Conant or west of the Lodge, so today the Davison Frwy is a short [[less than 3-miles long) freeway in the heart of Metro Detroit.