CARISTAS

A Diamond T in the rough

2012-01-29T00:16:00.000-05:00

Here's another hauler for Robb Mariani and his American Trucker crew to inspect when they get to Cuba. This bruiser, advertised on Revolico.com, is a 1952 Diamond T dump truck.
Built in Chicago, the Diamond T was known as "the Cadillac of trucks." These days, of course, Cadillac makes its own trucks, or at least sport-utilities, but it was strictly a passenger car producer throughout the Diamond T's 62-year run.
Diamond T also started as a carbuilder. C.A. Tilt, son of a successful shoe manufacturer, founded the Diamond T Motor Car Co. in 1905 to make four-cylinder roadsters. In 1911, after assembling a truck at the request of a customer who owned a plumbing supply company, Tilt decided that commercial vehicles represented a better opportunity and shifted his production exclusively to trucks. Tilt's enterprise would become one of the largest independent truck builders in the United States, turning out some 250,000 vehicles over more than five decades.

Diamond Ts were celebrated as much for their styling flair as their solid construction. Radiators and windshields were raked for a streamlined appearance, while chrome-slatted grilles and other slashes of brightwork announced that these were machines of value and substance. Backing up that assertion were heavy-gauge steel bodies, carefully formed to reduce wind noise, and massive frames supported by long, easy-riding springs and advanced rubber bushings.
After the Second World War, however, independent truck companies had increasing difficulty competing with the lower-priced commercial products of the big automakers, which could draw on huge economies of scale. In 1958 Diamond T was acquired by the White Motor Co. It survived as a separate nameplate until White merged it in 1967 with another subsidiary, REO, to build trucks under the Diamond Reo banner. That company declared bankruptcy in 1975.
The Diamond T shown here, probably from the manufacturer's 622 series, appears more solid than stylish. Its chrome grille is long gone, and its crude and massive replacement bumper looks ready to plow snow, should it ever snow in Cuba.
In place of the original overhead-valve, six-cylinder "Super-Service" gas engine (built for Diamond T by the Continental Motors Co.) is a Ukrainian KrAZ diesel. The transmission is also from KrAZ, and the differential from Fiat.
Asking price for this hefty machine, according to the Revolico listing, is 25,000 CUC. That's $25,000 in either U.S. or Canadian currency, given today's exchange rates.
A lot, perhaps, if this were some other brand from 1952  but not so much for the Cadillac of trucks.

Learn more about Diamond T at:
Diamondclassics.com

And see photos of Diamond Ts, Diamond Reos and many, many more trucks at:
Hankstruckpictures.com

It's a Gurgel!

2012-01-22T12:36:00.001-05:00

   I'd almost given up hope of identifying the car in this photo, first posted here nearly two years ago. But now Justino Silva Jr. has come to the rescue. This perky little buggy, Justino tells us, is a Gurgel X-12.
   Gurgel?
   Little known outside Latin America, Gurgel, I've discovered, has huge significance in Brazil. Gurgel Motors was founded in São Paulo in 1969 by João Augusto Conrado do Amaral Gurgel, a mechanical engineer and electrician whose life mission was to build a genuinely Brazilian vehicle.
   Gurgel began, however, with some German help, basing his first, dune buggy-style models on the Volkswagen running gear that so suited the light off-roaders. In the early 1970s he introduced the four-place Xavante, still using VW's air-cooled rear engine and other mechanicals. The Xavante evolved into the 1975 X-10, joined that same year by a heftier military version that also would be sold to the public as the X-12.
   With the Xavante came two notable innovations.The first was the fiberglass-and-steel composition of its unibody. This strong, rust-resistant material was patented by Gurgel as Plasteel.
   The second was Selectraction, which allowed the driver to pull levers next to the parking brake to stop a spinning rear wheel and direct more power to the opposing wheel.Gurgel fans say Selectraction provided near four-wheel-drive traction without 4WD's cost and added weight. Today, automatically controlled forms of this system are found in cars around the globe.

João Gurgel and the BR-800. Source unknown.

   The X-12 would be Gurgel's most popular model, staying in production through several redesigns until 1988. Added to the original soft-top configuration was the TR hardtop and, my favourite, the pickup-like X-12 RM.
   But Gurgel, who regularly compared himself to Henry Ford, still envisioned that all-Brazilian car that any of his countrymen could afford -- a modern Model T. In 1988, he finally realized his dream with the BR-800, a tiny "city car" with Plasteel body and a water-cooled, two-cylinder engine designed by Gurgel and called the Enertron. Its electronic ignition system, again patented by the Brazilian engineer, did not require a distributor.
   Though crude compared to city cars from the big automakers, the BR-800 was in early demand for its nationalist appeal. But sales fell off when the Brazilian government ended a tax break that had given it an edge over the Fiat Uno, Chevrolet Chevette and other rivals.

A memorable Gurgel truck. Photo source unknown.

An upgraded model called the Supermini was not enough to save Gurgel Motors from declaring bankruptcy in 1993.

João Gurgel, who died in 2009, produced some 40,000 vehicles, from the snappy X-10 and X-12 to his city cars to a fleet of small trucks and vans  many of those decidedly odd-looking  and even to an electric car.

   Like so many larger-than-life figures in auto history, Gurgel's contributions are still debated. Some Brazilians remember him as a noble dreamer, ahead of his time with his ideas for automotive efficiency. To others, however, he was a self-aggrandizer whose successes came only because of his government's protectionist policies of the day.
   But his real legacy, of course, is the Gurgel cars that still roll on. Like the X-12 I watched drive by in Havana, a sight Justino Silva Jr. calls "unbelievable."
   Ah, but this is Cuba, where car stories and mysteries abound.

Read more about João Gurgel and Gurgel Motors:

English:

Autosavant:Genius or Joker? João Gurgel and the Lost Cars of Brazil

Mark Holston, Model T for Modern Times

Portuguese:

gurgelmotores.vilabol.uol.com.br

www.gurgelclube.com.br

And see Justino Silva Jr.'s extensive collection of photos of the unique-to-Brazil Ford Corcel:

www.fotolog.com/fordcorcel

Back in the picture

2012-01-14T12:08:00.000-05:00

Appears that most of the photos on CARISTAS disappeared overnight, due to me fiddling with the confusing settings at the Picasa site where blogger.com images are archived. I've learned my lesson. They should all be back now.

Mr. Mariani, your trucks await

2012-01-06T19:49:00.000-05:00

My dream episode of American Trucker takes irrepressible host Robb Mariani to Cuba, where he can exclaim over the island's wondrous collection of old and new haulers.
Not likely, I know.

Cuba might be OK with it (with Cuba, you never know), but the Speed specialty channel  corporate cousin to Fox News  and its advertisers would almost certainly have, shall we say, concerns.

Mariani, a guy who wears the American flag on his sleeve, might hold his own objections to setting a show in a country that has been at odds with the United States longer than the majority of Americans and Cubans have been alive.
But I think his passion for trucks, and his desire to tell the stories of trucks and truckers and their too-often-unsung contributions to our world, would override any political considerations. And let's remember that he recently took viewers to Mexico, which, while not Cuba, is certainly not the U.S., either.
If you do get to Cuba, Robb, I've found a few trophies on Revolico, the Cuban version of Craigslist, that should interest you. They aren't the big rigs you love best, but I think you'll still agree that these are pretty cool.

The 1952 Ford above, also shown at the beginning of this post, has been converted to a 100-passenger bus. It has a diesel engine from Russian manufacturer Kamaz, a Kamaz transmission and a Fiat differential. The asking price is 38,000 Cuban convertible pesos (CUC), the equivalent of $38,000 U.S. Trucks don't run cheap in Cuba.

For 18,000 CUC  firm  this 1949 International comes with six gallons of paint and enough spare parts to almost build another truck, the seller says. It has an engine from Spanish manufacturer Pegaso, a "KP3" transmission that may be from a Ukrainian KrAZ truck, a Fiat differential and air brakes.

Another '52 Ford, this bus conversion has a Pegaso Comet engine, a Kamaz gearbox and a Russian ZIL differential and subframe. It rides on six new tires. Asking price: 17,000 CUC.

Form, function, Farina: The mid-50s Nash

2011-12-31T13:12:00.000-05:00

    It's not just the ornateness of 1950s cars  the swaths of chrome, the bold colours  that sets that automotive decade apart.
    Equally notable is the period's diversity of body lines. Round roofs, flat roofs. Fins and scallops. Fenders that stand proud, fenders that ease into hoods and doors. So many shapes to see.
    Though not always to savour.
    It was inevitable that the '50s, while producing so many classic vehicle designs, would also yield some duds. The economy was expanding, society was evolving, technology was advancing  and designers, while given great scope, were under enormous pressure, year after year, to create the new and different. Not all of their efforts could succeed.
   I've long put the mid-1950s Nash, tub-like and squint-eyed, in the dud category. Lately, though, I've started to, well, not quite like it ... but respect it.
   My change of heart stems from a discovery that Nash's signature ovoid styling was rooted in more than just a desire to look different from the Fords, Chevrolets and Plymouths. Nash Motors engineering chief Nils Eric Walhberg, I've learned, was a pioneer in the quest for improved fuel efficiency. It was he who dictated the bulbous body lines and front and rear wheel skirts that reduced aerodynamic drag, even if they did make the cars look like upended basins.
   Walhberg was definitely a function-first guy.

   Another major influence came from a different direction. Nash Motors, with only a small design staff of its own, engaged famed Italian stylist Pinin Farina to work up a design for its 1952 large sedan.
    Farina's submission, however, was a disappointment. According to this report by Consumer Guide, it looked "soft" and unsuited to American car proportions. Seeing it, Nash's executives opted to go with a design from their own staff, but one that incorporated the oval grille, reverse-angled C-pillars and other elements of the Italian's prototype. Walhberg's wind-cheating features, of course, were also preserved.
    For a car penned by committee, Nash's 52 flagship sedan (the Statesman in base trim and the Ambassador in a longer-wheelbase version) wasn't so bad. Its face, with wide-set headlamps flanking the big, vertical-barred grille, was indeed stately, and its profile was cigar-sleek.
    For 1955 came another remake. Nash was now part of American Motors Corp., and needed to be differentiated from its new Hudson sister line. To achieve this the designers moved the headlamps inboard, setting them within a grille placed between fenders that looked like sharp-edged pontoons. The sedan's tall sides, accentuated by a character line that rose from rear to front, made the car look even more pinched.
   The odd countenance could well have been taken from Farina's original prototype, since it bore close resemblance to the 1952 Nash-Healey sports car that was built in partnership with Britain's Donald Healey and also was designed by Farina.

   A year later, the knife-like fenders were blunted with prominent turn-signal fixtures, and the slab sides softened with zig-zags of chrome. For 1957, the final year for the Nash marque, the headlamps, now quads, moved back outside the grille. (American Motors would, however, stick with inboard lights on its Rambler until 1958.)
   The much-travelled 1955 Nash you see here -- a Statesman, I think -- has had two major design alterations during its years of service. The front wheel openings have been enlarged -- radiused, as the customizers say -- probably in conjunction with some internal modifications to reduce the Nash's notoriously large turning circle.
    More noticeable, though, is the crude addition of a second set of headlamps, pressed into the leading fender edges outside the grille.
   Perhaps the owner simply wanted more light. I suspect, however, that his real intention was to make his mid-50s Nash look more appealing. Not sure he succeeded, but I admire the attempt.

Something old, something new

2011-12-24T12:26:00.001-05:00

   Any weekday afternoon in Havana, you're likely to see a shiny classic convertible cruise by, bride and groom seated high in the back like parade marshals, smiling and waving as they accept the congratulations of passersby.
   Of late, however, some couples are electing to make the traditional tour by modern stretch limousine instead of open car, reports Here is Havana author Conner Gorry.
   And Cuba becomes a little more like everywhere else.
   Though you won't see any wedding cars, limo or convertible, on weekends. Civil marriages, the only type recognized in Cuba, are performed only during the week.

Ramblers and Republicans

2011-12-17T00:23:00.001-05:00

Mitt, 10, at the wheel of a Nash. Family photo, distributed by Associated Press.

   Watching the U.S. Republican debates makes me think of Rambler, which makes me think of my father. You, a student of automotive history, will have already surmised that the link here is Mitt Romney.
   Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, was regarded until recently as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination  and probably will be again once the party realizes that Newt Gingrich, the current favourite, is, oh yeah, that Newt Gingrich.
   But it's George W. Romney, Mitt Romney's father, who makes me think of Ramblers and my father. George Romney in 1954 became chairman and chief executive of American Motors Corp. newly formed from the merger of two struggling automakers, Hudson and Nash-Kelvinator.
   Tall, square-jawed, his greying hair swept back, George Romney looked every bit the executive, and he had the business drive to match. Yet he had other dimensions. Born to an American Mormon family in Mexico, he was active in his faith, serving as a missionary in France and later heading the church's Detroit district. He worked to improve schools and housing and fight racial discrimination in the Motor City.

Ford Presidential Lib. / Wikipedia.

   At American Motors, he instituted a then-radical profit-sharing plan for employees. But his best-known contribution was to spearhead the automaker's shift in focus to small cars, as embodied in AMC's revived Rambler line.
   The strategy was good for business, setting AMC apart from the Detroit Big Three and their ever-bigger barges. Yet it also reflected Romney's own all-things-in-moderation views. "Who wants to have a gas-guzzling dinosaur in his garage?" he asked in advertisements. "Think of the gas bills!"
   I can see why my father, rooter for underdogs and admirer of free-thinkers, especially those who espoused social causes, would buy a 1961 Rambler Classic 6. Unfortunately, that Rambler sedan was just a plain dog. Its all-aluminum six-cylinder engine (another innovation) never ran right. Within two years it was traded on a Ford.
   George Romney would become governor of Michigan, and then himself a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. But his pragmatic views proved confusing to party members, and he withdrew from the race.
My father didn't give up on AMC, or underdogs. In the early 1970s, a decade before American Motors would be swallowed by first Renault and then Chrysler, he bought a Hornet as the family's second car. I remember it as a serviceable little tractor. Then, in 1981, during one of Chrysler's periodic crises, he took Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca at his word and bought a K-car, a Plymouth Reliant. Three years later he did find and buy a better car  a Ford again.
   Some people wanted Iacocca to run for U.S. president, but he declined. A Ford, Gerald Ford, a Republican, did become president. He too was from Michigan, but he wasn't related to the automaking Fords.
   Mitt Romney seems more polished, less passionate that his father, but these are different times that demand more sophistication. If he does become president, he could well bring to the role the same beliefs and qualities his father held. The health-care reforms the son instituted in Massachusetts were as bold as the revenue-sharing plan the father put in place at American Motors years before.
   And if he doesn't, Ramblers like this 1958 Custom or Super in Cuba will suffice as the senior Romney's legacy. Its chrome has been altered, but its honest and practical essence is unmistakable, and a lasting reminder to sons of their fathers' values.

Salute to a Suburban

2011-11-29T12:18:00.001-05:00

Over at CubanClassics, Ralphee has a photo of a well-preserved 1950 Plymouth Special Deluxe Suburban. As always, he also provides some interesting background notes, in this case on a model with much significance in auto history.
His entry got me thinking: Didn't I see one of those? Turns out, I did. A far-from-pristine example, to be sure, with some awkward body revisions carried out in its conversion at some point to a small bus, of the sort seen everywhere in the Cuban countryside. But still, an honest wagon, and, as Ralphee notes, "a perfect fit for a small business or suburban commerce."

Emblematic

2011-11-26T11:52:00.001-05:00

In view of our discussion of trucks and badges, I can't resist offering a repeat view of a vehicle first presented here in March 2009. Though it bears the brands of many manufacturers including, of course, Hino  it is in fact a KAMAZ. And a spiffy one, at that.

Trams, trucks and taxis

2011-11-19T20:03:00.001-05:00

Dodge truck, converted to bus.

    You know what they say about '50s Cadillacs. Seen one, you want to see them all!
    Still, there can be a predictable sameness to the transportation pictures many visitors bring back from Cuba. Chevies and Cadillacs. Bright-hued convertibles. Stately Studebakers. I've taken more than a few of these myself.
    To the car enthusiast, such subjects are always of interest. But at the same time, they do little to satisfy our human craving for the new and different (or, in Cuba's case, the old and different).
    Fortunately, some visitors have a different focus. Take the Russian website ymtram.mashke.org, whose authors dedicate themselves to the presentation of images of trams, trolleybuses and other systems of public transit around the world.
    In a section on Cuba, the site offers some 90 photographs of rail transport (including steam trains and diesel locomotives), buses and taxis. Here you find see such trophies as a Russian LAZ-699R bus collecting passengers in Sancti Spiritus, and a KAMAZ truck tractor (also Russian) towing a Hungarian Ikarus bus body.
    From, Manati, Las Tunas Province. is a shot of a horse-drawn fixed-route taxi delivering passengers to an intercity bus connection, and from Santiago de Cuba a photo of, yes, classic Ford and Chevy taxis lined outside a hotel. Captions, some quite detailed, are in Russian and English. A separate section provides extensive information on Cuba's Hershey electric railway that operates (sporadically) between Havana and Matanzas.
   Fans of trucks, trains and buses will find plenty to savour at the well-organized ymtram.mashke.org site. And even if your tastes run more to Plymouths and Packards, you could enjoy sampling this different fare.


Open-concept tractor wears a Kenworth badge, but its fenders look Russian.

See also:

KrAZ: The King Kong of trucks

In Soviet Russia, truck owns you!

The busman's paradise

Winging it

2011-11-13T18:29:00.001-05:00

Hino Motors had its beginnings in Tokyo Gas and Electric, which produced its first vehicle, the "A-Type" truck, in 1917. Hino emerged as a separate company in 1942 to make military vehicles, and after the Second World War turned its focus to diesel engines, trucks and buses.

Today controlled by Toyota, Hino is Japan's largest truck-builder. But it has also at times produced cars, including Renault 4CVs built under licence in the 1950s and its own sweet-looking Contessa in 1961.

It has used many versions of its winged logo through the years, as can be seen from these images from Hino's website. Sadly, the wings now are history, replaced by an unremarkable stylized H that appears patterned on Toyota's oval emblem.

I'm guessing that the huge sets of Hino wings so proudly displayed on many Cuban trucks today originally arrived in the 1970s and '80s on buses imported by the island for use on intercity routes. Adrián León Aja has posted a remarkable collection of photos of those buses on Flickr.

The truck that fooled me

2011-11-06T11:06:00.001-05:00

When I posted photos of this survivor some time back, I identified it as a Hino. I was wrong, of course. But what kind of truck is it? See the answer here.

Three ringers, one winger

2011-11-02T23:23:00.000-04:00

Last entry, I challenged readers to identify the real Hino or Hinos among a group of Cuban trucks all wearing the winged emblem of the Japanese manufacturer (to see the quiz, click here).

The answers:

Truck C: Nope. The styling has a bit of a Japanese look, and the cabover design certainly is in keeping with modern Hinos. But this blue hauler is a product of Czech manufacturer Avia. Founded in 1919 as an aircraft and engine builder, Avia expanded to trucks after the Second World War. Smart-looking and practical, this is an Avia A31. The model was introduced in 1983 as an update to the Avia A30, itself a variant of the Renault-Saviem SG-4 Super Galion built under licence.Avia was taken over by Korea's now-defunct Daewoo in 1995 and today is a unit of India's Ashok Leyland.

Truck A: Nope again. I saw this compact school bus in Havana. I'm not certain of its make (though I know it's no Hino) but I suspect it's a Girón VI, from a factory in Cuba that built buses under licence from Ikarus of Hungary between the 1970s and 1990s. If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will tell me.

Truck D: You didn't think this was a Hino, did you? North Americans might look at that face and think International Harvester. Truck-watchers from other parts of the world, however, will know this well-turned-out dump truck is a Russian ZIL 130. Some 3.4 million 130s were built at a factory near Moscow between 1964 and the 1990s. Like a larger Toyota pickup, the ZIL 130 is renowned for being nearly indestructible. It's a common sight across Cuba.

Truck B: Hello Hino! Yes, as a reader points out, this one looks Russian, not Japanese. Or maybe a fairly recent issue from KrAZ, maker of bruiser trucks in Ukraine. But it's all Hino, and appears similar to this Hino EB300 in the Philippines (asking price: 280,000 pesos, the equivalent of $6,661.67 Cdn.). I'm thinking it dates from the 1970s. I'm also thinking that Philippines Hino is one KrAZy deal.

Spot the Hino, win, well, bragging rights

2011-10-23T20:20:00.000-04:00

    Visitors can be forgiven for thinking that every second truck in Cuba is a product of Japanese manufacturer Hino.
    In fact, the only Hino contribution to most of those trucks is the winged badge on the grille. Everything back of that badge is pure -- OK, pure-ish -- Soviet technology.
    Why do Cuban truckers mount big chrome Hino logos on their vehicles? I think it's because they look so cool.
    So can you tell which of the vehicles below is a real Hino, and which are imposters?

Truck A

Truck B

Truck C

Truck D

I'll provide answers in my next post.

Er, grab the bottle?

2011-10-16T23:32:00.000-04:00

    Nick Miroff seems quite taken with the female hitchhikers in Havana. In a report for NPR, he tells of watching "two dozen or so young women trying to coger botella, as it's called in Cuban parlance" on the Malecón one afternoon. The term, he says, "literally means 'grabbing a bottle,' after the universal thumbs-up sign."
    I've seen it translated as "making the bottle," but "grabbing" is new to me.
    "Only no one here uses thumbs anymore," Miroff continues. "Instead, when cars pull up, smiling women lean in to ask drivers for rides. Some practically force their way into cars, even to travel just a few blocks up the street."
    At the risk of appearing cynical, I might suggest that the young ladies on the Malecón, the oceanside boulevard known for its jineteras (and jineteros), may well have been offering the motorists a ride.
    Some, of course, would have been seeking only transportation. As Miroff points out, in a city with good public safety, women can be comfortable getting into cars with strangers. Certainly more comfortable than trying to thread their way into one of Havana's sardine-shuttle public buses.
    Hitchhikers, female and male, young and old, are everywhere in Cuba, and drivers of state-owned vehicles are obliged to pick them up. At many points, rides are organized by a functionary known as El Amarillo ("the yellow guy," for his yellow-beige uniform). In other places, hikers simply make the bottle.

See also: Squeezing Room Only

Same cars, different Hershey

2011-10-12T23:24:00.003-04:00

The Jardines de Hershey: Good spot for a car show?

    Last week the old cars and their owners, many just as old, assembled in Hershey, Pennsylvania, for the Eastern Fall Meet that is a premier date of the Antique Automobile Club of America.
   As long as they're ticking, cars and owners will be back for future autumn meets.
   But John Dowlin dreams of more such gatherings, in another place called Hershey.
   In an op-ed column in the Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot-News, the co-founder of the TailLight Diplomacy group proposes an annual car show in Cuba that could be a sister event to the antique car fair in Pennsylvania.
    And what more suitable site, he asks, than the village established east of Havana in 1917 by confectioner Milton S. Hershey to support his sugar mill?

Dowlin's non-profit TailLight group seems to sputter along on two cylinders  the other being Rick Shnitzler, a fellow Philadelphian. It has no website. Many Castro opponents view it with suspicion.

Yet the tiny organization has succeeded in alerting Americans to Cuba's vast store of pre-1960 Detroit-made automobiles, and to the value in preserving a living, rolling collection that Dowlin and others call "as important to Havana as the cable cars are to San Francisco, the gondolas to Venice."
Hershey, Cuba, is known today for its picturesque (and unreliable) electric railway and for a lush botanical garden -- both gifts of its founder. Beyond that, Hershey is as tired and crumbling as any spot on the island. A good place for a car show? Perhaps not, except for the resonance of a name that just might build fraternity between the old car buffs of the United States and the custodians of the old cars of Cuba.

A Moskvich 1500 at the botanical gardens.

Five reasons why Cuba's car-ownership reforms mean next to nada

2011-10-01T20:34:00.004-04:00

Newly obtainable: a Chery QQ in Havana.

    As of today, Cuban citizens are finally allowed to buy and sell all years of vehicles  and not just the 1960 and earlier cars and trucks that were in private hands before the revolution.
    Some observers believe this change, part of reforms promised by the government in April, will hasten the disappearance of the island's vast fleet of Packards, Studebakers and other rolling relics. Proclaimed Britain's The Independent newspaper: "For the bangers of Havana, it's the end of the road."
    Hardly. The old cars  many battered, some pristine  will soldier on in Cuba. Here's why.

    1. No cash for even clunkers. The average Cuban makes the equivalent of $20 U.S. a month. That won't buy a tank of gasoline, let alone a car to put it in. Remittances from relatives outside the island may help some families get wheels, but won't be enough to dramatically alter the Cuban car scene.

    2. Show me your papers. Decree 292, the law permitting title transfers for used vehicles, has 16 pages of provisions, including a requirement for a sworn declaration that the money to buy the vehicle was made legally. That will dissuade many potential buyers. Obtaining a brand new vehicle is even more complicated. Citizens can buy only one new car every five years, and only from state distributors. And they must be able to prove that the money came from work for a state institution.

    3. Thanks, but I have one. Those willing to evade Cuba's rules and regulations have long had access to a busy black market for vehicles left behind by foreign workers, and the Eastern Bloc cars that favoured state employees could buy before 1990. Some might use the new law to make their transactions legal, if they can unravel the long ownership trails. And if they are willing to pay the four-per-cent sales tax Cuba will impose on both buyer and seller.

    4. The supply trickle. Cars are not coming in by the boatload. That U.S. trade embargo is one reason for this. The economy is another.

    5. Oldies but goodies. The Independent, the same newspaper that predicted the coming demise of Cuba's vintage fleet, refers to the struggle between Cuban mechanics and the "built-in obsolescence" of their American machines. Sorry, blokes, but you must be thinking of British Leyland. The newest of the pre-revolution cars is more than 50 years old. Working with the solid foundation of the Yank tanks, Cuban have learned to repair, fabricate and adapt as needed to keep them running indefinitely. It makes me think of the gracious, grey-haired owner of a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air who told me, "The car is ... " He searched for a word. "Unbreakable." We both knew his Chevy had broken before, and would again. And we both knew exactly what he meant.

The young and the reckless

2011-09-25T00:02:00.000-04:00

Trim taxi: 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air Beauville.

     The going rate for a rutero trip is 10 Cuban pesos, reports Here is Havana blogger Conner Gorry. That's the equivalent of 39 Canadian cents.
    This, of course, is the fare for locals (of which Gorry, American birth notwithstanding, is most decidedly one). Hop in as an obvious visitor, and you should expect to be asked for at least one convertible peso ($1.03 Cdn.)
    Gorry, however, warns that a change in regulations has made riding in a fixed-route collective much riskier.
Where once only the owner was permitted to operate a car as a taxi, reforms aimed at encouraging more free enterprise now allow that owner to hire others to take shifts behind the wheel.
    As a consequence, "drivers are now young, restless and reckless," says Gorry. "It's plain some of them have never even driven before."
   Yeah, but hey  39 cents?

See also: Havana's fixed-route taxis.

Computer cacharro

2011-09-19T20:45:00.001-04:00

   Nothing like a hard drive crash to bring home the importance of backing up irreplaceable photos. I have an external drive, but for some reason  OK, laziness  I hadn't copied anything to it for 12 months.
   So when my main drive gave up last week, I thought I'd lost a year's worth of material -- including nearly 800 Cuba images. I was bummed.
   Fortunately, after a series of manoeuvres that would make a Cuban mechanic proud  yes, including the freezer trick  I was able to bring the drive back to life. Photos and less important stuff, like tax returns, are safely backed up.
   And I'm even using that same drive as I write this, though I realize it's living on b

Take a number

2011-09-06T23:28:00.001-04:00

A Geely CK police car in Havana.

    That figure of 60,000 old American cars in Cuba has again come under question, but this time from a more credible direction. In a recent report from the island, Detroit Free Press travel writer Ellen Creager suggests the number might actually fall between 20,000 and 50,000.
    Creager cites only "auto watchers" as her authority on this. Elsewhere in her readable and even-handed article, however, she relies on Rick Shnitzler of the Taillight Diplomacy group and John McElroy of Autoline Detroit, a weekly television show, for insight into Cuba's automotive scene.
   And for the real nuts and bolts she speaks to Cuban car owners like Obel Aguado of Vinales, who employs a two-litre bottle as makeshift gas tank for his restoration-in-progress 1955 Dodge. You can see a photo of it in a 47-image slide show that accompanies the article.
   Creager, of course, wouldn't be a Detroiter if she didn't comment on the lost opportunity for American automakers barred from selling cars to Cuba by the long-standing U.S. trade embargo.
   "While U.S. automakers sit on the sidelines, Chinese automakers are making inroads into the nation of 11 million," she writes, noting that Geely alone has exported more than 5,000 vehicles to Cuba since 2008.

Squeezing room only

2011-08-28T12:16:00.001-04:00

In cities around the world, crowded buses are a regular sight at rush hour. In Cuba, crowded buses are a common sight at any time. These images were taken in Havana in the early afternoon.

Havana's fixed-route taxis, concluded

2011-08-21T13:42:00.002-04:00

Puffing 1956 Oldsmobile sedan still has its "88" decklid badge.

Chrysler export model could be a 1957 or '58 Plymouth.

Perhaps a 1955 Dodge Coronet.

With this collection, we reach the end of the line on the rutero topic. The fixed-route taxi in which I'd most like to ride? No question. The magnificent 1954 Cadillac Series 62, below. Even with a front bumper from an earlier year, it's still the King of Cabs.

Series 62 is a Standard Hardtop, or even a Coupe de Ville.

Havana's fixed-route taxis, IV

2011-08-14T22:18:00.000-04:00

1953 Chevrolet Handyman (or perhaps a Townsman).

     Peso taxis, or ruteros, emerged soon after the revolution to ease Cuba's overburdened public transportation system, Richard Schweid writes in Che's Chevrolet, Fidel's Oldsmobile.
    With no replacement parts available, buses were harder than cars to keep on the road. To help citizens get about, the government put private vehicles on designated routes under the administration of the Servicio de Transporte Popular.
    Cuba has more buses today, though not as many as it needs, so the ruteros remain. For Schweid, they offer "a cheap way to get from old Havana to Vedado and enjoy a ride in some car that I never anticipated riding again for the rest of my life: a 1953 Dodge, four of us crammed in the back seat and two in front with the driver; or a 1954 Ford station wagon with two back seats, the extra welded into the carryall space ... "
    For the author, an added delight is to watch the driver work the gear selector mounted on the steering column, right arm pushing the lever out and up by the steering wheel to make the shift to second.
    "To ride in a car where the driver is making that motion is another thing I had not expected to do again," he reports.

Same Chevy station wagon, spotted later that day.

Havana's fixed-route taxis, III

2011-08-10T23:31:00.000-04:00

1957 Buick Special.

Last entry, I suggested avoiding peso taxis unless you have a reasonable grasp of Havana geography and can communicate in Spanish. Support for that advice comes in this account by Canadian blogger Ze'ev of a not-so-merry ride from Old Havana to Vedado.
Fortunately, it didn't end too badly.

A 1958 Ford peso taxi passes a more modern Havana cab.

Another Ford sedan, this one from 1959.

Grille lettering reveals this Oldsmobile as a '55.

Havana's fixed-route taxis, II

2011-08-06T18:01:00.004-04:00

Southbound 1952 Chevrolet taxi on Calle 23 (La Rampa).

    Many visitors think that the peso taxis are only for Cuban citizens. In fact, anyone can use them, the Cuba Junky website reports in this useful article on the taxi colectivo Habana.
   Cuba Junky provides a route map and a list of do's and don'ts to help you avoid paying more than the standard 10- or 20-peso fare (Cuban pesos, not convertible).
   Still, it's more complicated than hopping in a regular Havana taxi and naming your destination. I wouldn't recommend a peso taxi to a first-time visitor or anyone without at least some Spanish.

Boarding a Marianao-bound 1956 Oldsmobile sedan.

Havana's fixed-route taxis, Part I

2011-07-31T12:16:00.000-04:00

A 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air peso taxi in Havana's Vedado district.

For the car spotter, the shared "peso taxis" that run along set routes in the Cuban capital provide a parade of opportunities. These privately owned taxis, nearly all of them 1950s American sedans and wagons, serve Habaneros as an alternative to the city's crowded public transit buses.They aren't showpiece vehicles; they're too well used for that. But most look remarkably good considering the thousands  millions?  of miles they've travelled.
For the next while, I will be bringing you images of these hard-working cars.

Rear quarter windows mark this 1950 Cadillac cab as a Series 62 model.

The Truth About Cuban Cars

2011-07-28T12:32:00.001-04:00

Studebaker Hawk (probably a Flight Hawk or a Power Hawk, and possibly from 1956).

   At the website that calls itself The Truth About Cars, contributor Ronnie Schreiber reports that per capita income in pre-Castro Cuba "was one of the highest in the western hemisphere."
    Wrong-o, Ronnie. The average annual income in Cuba in the 1950s was about $500 U.S. (No Free Lunch: Food and Revolution in Cuba Today; Medea, Collins and Scott, 1984). That trailed Venezuela and and Argentina among Latin American nations and was perhaps one-third of the figure for the United States and Canada.
    So what has this to do with cars?
    Schreiber has a hate-on for Fidel Castro's regime, and a conviction that those with more moderate views are unwitting tools of the bearded one and his buds. Or in the case of Taillight Diplomacy, a small, U.S.-based movement to support Cuba's classic car owners, witting tools, he suggests.
    "Taillight Diplomacy may appeal to our automotive and human interests but their agenda may be more political than humanitarian," writes Schreiber. "Rather than being a car club, Taillight Diplomacy is in fact a lobbying group with ties to the Cuban regime, aimed more at undermining support for the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba than on fostering ties between American and Cuban car enthusiasts."
    Hmm. Sounds a bit like KAOS. Maxwell Smart warned
us about this.

In Havana, a 1955 Pontiac Chieftain.

    To back his assertion, Schreiber throws out facts and opinions like buckshot. None of it is penetrating. The "ties to the Cuban regime" turn out to be an association with Fernando Remirez, a senior Cuban government official who spent time in Washington as head of the Cuban Interest Section  essentially, Cuba's ambassador to the U.S. It's hard to imagine how the group could function without some connection with the Cuban government.
    Schreiber says "it's not clear" how many old American cars survive in Cuba, a surprising statement when the number has long been pegged at 60,000. He takes issue with claims that Cuba is home to the world's largest collection of vintage American vehicles, noting that the U.S. itself must have more than 100,000 pre-1960 cars. No doubt that's true, but where in the U.S. do you see vast numbers of these old-timers in daily use?
    The chief reason so many old vehicles live on in Cuba, he suggests, is not the trade embargo that prevents new U.S. cars from reaching the island, but the Cuban government's long-standing prohibition of private vehicle ownership (pre-revolution cars excluded). The full political and economic story, of course, is more complicated, but Schreiber doesn't sweat the details.
    Take his claim about per capita income in the 1950s. Not only does he torque the figure, but he fails to report that behind that average was an economy in which 20 per cent of the populace took in 50 per cent of the national income, while the bottom 20 per cent received just six per cent (Driving Through Cuba, Gébler, 1988). That would explain how such a strong market for Cadillacs could also be so receptive to the anti-Batista factions, Castro's 26th of July movement included, that sought to establish a more equitable society.
    Ronnie Schreiber needs to look less at politics and more at cars. He needs to go to Cuba.
He's American, so it will take a bit of arranging, but when he gets there he will see the clunkers and the cream puffs, and he'll meet their owners and learn that most don't give a pinion seal about politics; they just want to keep their cars running. And like every car buff, he too will realize the importance of preserving a unique, delightful automotive treasure that stands apart from governments and political philosophies.
    He will make a fine member of Taillight Diplomacy.

Ford vs. Chevy: 1954 Customline (right) and 1953 210 in Matanzas Province.

P.S. Schreiber's entry seems to have disappeared from The Truth About Cars, but you can still see it here.

The only Porsche 911 in Cuba, Part III

2011-07-14T21:47:00.002-04:00

    David and I walk to the backyard, where we're joined by the woman I met earlier and her husband, a compact, quiet man named Armando. If Armando is surprised by my interest in his project, he doesn't show it. A curious young neighbour comes over, adding to the party as Armando pulls open the garage doors to reveal the car within.
    Seen for more than a moment, it's clear this Porsche never came off the Zuffenhausen assembly line. The wheelbase is too short for a 911, and the body proportions are wrong. This is especially revealed in the roof that falls back sharply from the windshield post. On a true 911, the roof slopes only gradually over the front seats.
    Armando is making this Porsche.

    Yet were I unfamiliar with the 911, I might never guess this car was not factory-built. The body needs more filling and sanding, but its line are ruler-straight, and its many curves beautifully executed. Armando proudly invites me to inspect the rear bumper fascia. I expect it to be plastic, but no, this complex piece is formed from metal.
    Under his bodywork is a donor rear-engine chassis, or perhaps parts of more than one chassis. Armando opens the louvered back deck lid. There's no engine yet, but the rear spring towers I see tell me this is no Volkswagen. But what is it? A Polski Fiat 126p? Plenty of those in Cuba.
    Armando is happy to show his car but less happy answering questions. Did he pattern it on photos from magazines? Yes. Is he a big fan of Porsches? I realize he's unfamiliar with the name. "He thinks it's a BMW," David confides.
    I take some more photos and offer a final "bueno!" to Armando, who smiles. It's time to bring my scooter back to the depot.
    By now Armando's car is probably on the road, perhaps zipping along the Via Blanca or flashing down a narrow street in Havana. And I can imagine a visitor seeing it for a moment and exclaiming -- "A Porsche! A Porsche 911!"

A future Miss Cuba and her ride.

The only Porsche 911 in Cuba, Part II

2011-07-09T12:11:00.000-04:00

     The next day I walked to the rental agency up the road and took out a Yamaha scooter. I wanted to find that Porsche.
    Within half an hour I was in an area with the sea close by to the north and a scattering of houses on the far side of the highway. It looked right. I drove along the shoulder, scanning the yards as blue tour buses rushed by. No Porsche.
    Back and forth I rode, the breeze off the water working first for me and then against me. A motorcycle cop rumbled past on his Virago. I looked over and smiled  Hello, my Yamaha brother!  but he ignored me.
    In one yard stood a small wooden garage. Could it be in there? I bumped up a short dirt road and stopped before the house. I was taking off my helmet when a woman came out. "Carro?" I asked, pointing beyond the house. "Porsche? Mecánico?"
    She held up a finger and disappeared around the side of the building. A few moments later, a young man appeared. "Hi," he said. "Can I help you?"
    "Wow  you speak good English," I blurted in what, you'll agree, was not especially good English.
    "I should," he responded. "I'm American."
    David told me he was Florida-born and in Cuba to visit relatives. And yes, he told me, the man who lived at the house had a Porsche in the garage.
   "He's making it," he added.
   "Making it? Can I see it?"
   "Sure."

The only Porsche 911 in Cuba, Part I

2011-07-04T00:07:00.003-04:00

    We were clipping along the Via Blanca when I caught a glimpse of the blue car in the yard of a house near the highway. It took a few seconds to register.
    "Porsche," I said to Daniel, our driver, pointing over my shoulder. "Porsche 911!"
    "Yes," he said, smiling blankly.
    I realized my hand was tracing in the air that delightful curve of roofline and tail. I picked up my notepad and tried to draw it.
   "Yes," Daniel said again, nodding politely. I looked at my rough sketch and realized that to him, it might have looked like a '51 Chevrolet Fleetline.
   But why would he recognize a 911? The car that is an icon to the rest of the world never reached Cuba, its 1963 introduction too late for the island's once vibrant motorsports scene that had faded to nothing in the first years of the Castro government.
   There are a handful of older Porsche 356s in Cuba, including this 356A Coupe T2 that Ralphee of CubanClassics spotted in a Vedado garage. All have been much photographed and remarked upon.
   Never, though, had I heard of a 911 anywhere on the island. Yet I didn't think I was mistaken.

Cadillacs, continued

2011-06-29T17:47:00.001-04:00

Photo by Tony Robertson. Used by permission.

Our Cadillac kick has prompted Tony Robertson to share this photo of a 1958 convertible that he recalls often seeing around Havana. Certainly a pleasant sight!
    And that reminds me of this November 1959 account by Harry F. Byrd Jr., editor of the Winchester, Virginia, Star (and later a U.S. senator). Part of a diary-style report on changes in post-revolution Cuba, it reveals a sudden drop in Cadillac values after the Castro takeover:

"Another incident demonstrates to what an extent business conditions have deteriorated. A friend of mine sought to purchase a Chevrolet, which was priced at $4,900. The dealer told him that if he would take a Cadillac convertible Eldorado (priced at $12,?50) he would sell it to him for $4,700. The dealer explained that if he did not immediately get rid of the Cadillac (a pet hate of the revolutionaries) that with conditions worsening he probably would never be able to sell it."

   For a moment, I thought the car described by Byrd might be the same Cadillac photographed by Tony. But then I realized that the pictured convertible is a Series 62, not the rarer Eldorado Biarritz convertible (the Eldorado coupe model was the Seville, and the four-door the Brougham). Biarritz production was held to just 815 in 1958 and 1,320 in 1959.
   We can only wonder where that Eldorado Biarritz went, and where it might be today.

   Read Byrd's full account here.

Diplomats, Consuls and Ambassadors to the front of the line

2011-06-23T21:12:00.000-04:00

Awaiting its Detroit debut? A 1951 Buick Special De Luxe in Havana.

Cuba is home to the world's largest collection of vintage American cars in daily use. Detroit is home to the world's largest one-day automotive event, the Woodward Dream Cruise on the third Saturday in August.
    So why not build a connection between the two? Seems like a natural.
    Well, there is that five-decade-old diplomatic imbroglio that is the reason so many of Cuba's cars date from before 1960.
    But as Mark Phelan reports in the Detroit Free Press, one American car guy believes a shared appreciation of old iron could outweigh the political differences. Rick Schnitzler hopes to see Cuban classics joining the parade along Woodward Avenue, and perhaps modern American cars returning the favour with a display on the Malecón in Havana.
    Schnitzler, of Philadelphia, is a co-founder of Taillight Diplomacy, a volunteer group that offers its expertise in maintenance and restoraton to Cuban car owners. It recently helped authenticate Ernest Hemingway's 1955 Chrysler New York DeLuxe convertible that will be restored for display at the author's long-time home in Cuba.
    Hard to imagine a Cuba-U.S. car exchange taking place any time soon ... but fun to imagine, just the same. And isn't the Detroit event all about dreaming?
    My suggestion? Start small, with the uniquely Cuban vehicle that the island nation has already sent to other countries as a tourism ambassador.
    That's right. Put a coco taxi in the Dream Cruise.

A coco cab on the Malecón.

Synchromesh-ity

2011-06-19T14:51:00.004-04:00

    It was Carl Jung, I believe, or maybe Carroll Shelby, who observed: "Coincidence? Ain't no such thing."
    Which suggests some other meaning for my encounters with Cadillac Eldorado Broughams.
    Item: I read Carlo Gébler's account of his search in Cuba for a 1957 or 1958 Brougham, a rare, ultra-luxury model of which I was previously unaware.
    Item: My brother and I spot a 1958 Brougham outside a classic car dealership in Sarasota, Florida (and yes, hanging around a classic car dealership does indeed increase your odds of seeing a classic car, but remember, they made only 704 of these things).
   Item: Flipping through the TV channels, I'm stopped by the sight of a black, late-'50s Cadillac executing high-speed doughnuts on the Bonneville Salt Flats to a soundtrack of barking exhaust and Pérez Prado's Mambo No. 5. Squared-off fins, stainless trim, doors that meet in the centre  Hey, that's a Brougham!
    The commercial is one of those "Bridgestone or nothing" spots, and it has a sweet punchline.

Here's a "making of" video that tells us the actual driver (sorry to spoil the magic) is New Zealander and drifting champ Rhys Millen, and that the car was prepared at the Picture Car Warehouse, a Northridge, California, vehicle supplier to the television and movie industry.

    But why a Brougham, which, assuming the subject car still had its original air suspension, would have been more difficult to set up for such shenanigans than any other '58 Cadillac?
   Well, why not? Picture Car Warehouse was up to the job. It knows Cadillacs. It provided the 1962 Coupe de Ville that Don Draper drives in Mad Men. It even works out of a former Cadillac dealership.
    There's that Caddy continuum again. I'm not sure what it means. I'm not sure I'm meant to be sure. Or as Jung was told by his teacher, Sigmund "Fleetwood" Freud, before their falling-out:
    "Cadillac  don't talk back."

The Brougham next door

2011-06-12T16:13:00.004-04:00

Carlo Gébler went to Cuba to find the "Cadillac of Cadillacs," an Eldorado Brougham. I came across a 1958 Brougham not far from Cuba, at Vintage Motors of Sarasota Inc. in Florida.
Chamonix White on the outside, white leather with black trim on the inside, this was one of just 704 Broughams produced in 1957 and '58. As Cadillac's showpiece, the Brougham was set apart by quad headlamps, brushed stainless steel roof and rear-hinged rear doors. Self-levelling air suspension cushioned the ride as a 365-cubic-inch V-8 engine (fed by a pair of four-barrel carburetors in the first year, three two-barrels in the second) powered it along the new Interstate highways.

With no centre pillar, swinging open the four doors allowed easy access and an unimpeded view of the contoured seats and other luxuries within. Many of the Brougham's standard features would not arrive in other cars for decades  automatic locks, power seats with memory settings, power trunk lid, auto-dipping headlamps. In addition, it was famously fitted with "vanities" that included stainless steel drinking tumblers, a leather-clad notebook with Cross sterling silver pencil and a one-ounce bottle of Arpège Extrait de Lanvin perfume.
At $13,074, it was fabulously expensive. Even then, General Motors reportedly lost thousands on every Brougham sold.

   This Brougham, I was told, had just been parked outside Vintage Motors by new owners taking delivery. Given the model's low production total and worldwide following, the history of many Broughams has been well documented. This could be Brougham No. 650, which according to the definitive New Cadillac Database maintained by Yann Saunders, figured in a classic automotive love story.
    Bought new by an American family, it was coveted by the 14-year-old boy who lived next door. Decades later, he would buy the car from the estate and own it for several years. Later, it became part of the collection of the Sterling McCall Cadillac Museum in Texas. Today, just weeks after I saw it in Florida, it's for sale again at the Bay City Motor Co. in Michigan with an asking price of $149,900.
   Brougham No. 650 has lived all its life in the United States. But 703 other Broughams were built for 1957 and 1958, and some have been lost to history. Most of the missing were no doubt scrapped years ago, and others could rest in anonymous private collections. And a few, perhaps, await the day they again see the Havana sunlight.

Tilting at Cadillacs

2011-06-08T22:37:00.001-04:00

Quijote de America, statue in Vedado by Sergio Martínez (1930-1988)

After years of seeing references to Carlo Gébler's 1988 work, Driving Through Cuba, an East-West Journey (Hamish Hamilton Ltd.), I've finally found a copy. Not that anything was lost in the interval. Given the slow pace of change in Cuba, Gébler's book could have been written last week.
As the title promises, this is a road trip. The best kind, too, it turns out  the kind in which the narrator pushes ahead without set itinerary or even a reliable map, as unknowing as you, the gleeful reader, of what might await beyond the next rise.

Carlo Gébler

    You aren't the only one along for the ride. With the author in a rental Lada of dubious electrics is his pregnant wife Tyga and their young daughter India, both seemingly as willing as he is to accept whatever they encounter, from empty grocery shelves to pursuing money-traders to tire-puncturing crab migrations.
    They have a quest, of sorts. Gébler (God love him) is an admirer of the grand, 1950s-era American cars for which Cuba, by the 1980s, had already become famous. The Irish writer hopes to come across one of the most opulent and rare of those cars  a 1957 or 1958 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, a four-door hardtop with stainless steel roof and air suspension. "Visually, with its tailfins, sculpted exhaust and sweeping lines of chrome, it was one of the most extraordinary if exaggerated cars of the Fifties," he explains.
    And what better place than Cuba, where a small wealthy class had a huge taste for Cadillacs, to see one?
Unlike so many tourists, however, Gébler embarks without a trunkful of preconceptions. If there are judgments in his account, I couldn't find them. Instead, the observant Gébler serves us morsel upon morsel of detail. We learn about the island's history, about the lives of the Cubans he encounters, about the stitches administered at a Trinidad hospital after India cuts her eyelid in a fall. It is pure journalism, with the ring of objectivity and the clink of the rum bottle in the glovebox from which he takes an occasional sip.
    It's a fascinating road trip.
    But what, you ask, about Gébler's quarry, the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham? Does he find one?
    Sorry  you'll have to find your own copy of Driving Through Cuba. It will be old, but it won't seem dated.

So many questions

2011-05-26T20:53:00.000-04:00

    Most of this Havana peso taxi is, I believe, a 1980s Ford fullsize van. That indented accent line above the rocker panel is too distinctive for it to be anything else. The wraparound taillamps must be later additions.
   At first I thought it was the Club Wagon model, but then I realized the sliding side windows are also additions, and probably came from a bus. The rub strips? From a tree.
   But the grille, hood and front fenders? International sprang to mind, no doubt because the word International is painted on the side (along with Fault Line, which I take as ironic statement). But no, these bits aren't from any International truck I can identify.
    So what, then, was the donor? A Soviet military carrier? A British bread van? Or is that bold beak some fiberglass add-on kit, like the Rolls-Royce prows people used to bolt on to their Volkswagen Beetles?
One thing I know. Even without the wooden rub strips, this van would be unique.

That should buff out

2011-05-17T23:15:00.001-04:00

A closer look at Ernest Hemingway's 1955 Chrysler New Yorker DeLuxe convertible.

Photo by Ouno Design, used by permission.

The old man and his Chrysler

2011-05-13T20:46:00.009-04:00

Photo by Ouno Design, used by permission.

Papa owned a Lincoln, a Buick, but at heart, Papa was a Chrysler man. His Wheeler Playmate cabin cruiser, the Pilar, had two engines. The 50-horsepower Lycoming ran alone when he sought marlin and sailfish and German submarines. The Chrysler Crown reduction engine added its 70 horsepower for the runs between islands, throttles open, fans expelling the volatile fumes from belowdecks.
In Cuba early on Papa ferried his son Gregory's baseball team, the Gigi stars, in a Chrysler. Decades later old men would remember jamming in, a jumble of brown arms and legs, for games at the Club de Cazadores.

JFK Library Collection.

    In 1953 he bought his fourth and last wife, Mary, a Cranbrook convertible. It was a Chrysler, a Plymouth, a yellow car with wire wheels.
    Then in 1955 Ernest Hemingway paid $3,924 for a Chrysler New Yorker DeLuxe convertible. To the Cubans, seeing it driving between Finca Vigía -- the Lookout Farm -- and the Pilar's berth in Cojimar, it looked red and white. The manufacturer said Navajo Orange over Desert Sand.
    In July 1960 Papa left Cuba for the last time, carrying his depression, his accident scars, leaving his boat, his convertible, his 57 cats. A year later at his other home in Ketchum, Idaho, he pulled the triggers of his shotgun and was dead.
    Finca Vigía came into government hands. Seized by Castro's Communists, said some. Donated by Mary, others said. Today it is a museum where tourists pay 3 CUC to see Hemingway's animal trophies and bathroom scale and 8,000 books -- and 5 CUC more if they want to take photos. Under a nearby shelter gleams the Pilar, a Viking boat awaiting its chieftain.
    The Chrysler New Yorker? Hemingway's driver, Augustin Nuñez Gutiérrez, took it away, the stories said, and later hid it from the authorities who wanted it for the museum. Hid it well.
    Yet in late 2010 the carcass of a Chrysler convertible, sides eaten by rust, soft top long missing, was dragged to the Lookout Farm. Of the 950 New Yorker DeLuxe convertibles made in 1953, said the government, this is Hemingway's.
    Confirmation comes from Christopher Baker. On his Moon Travel Guides blog he tells of seeing the Chrysler's serial number and the matching number on the insurance policy Hemingway took out. He tells of museum director Ada Rosa Alfonso's discovery that Hemingway's doctor, José Luis Herrera Sotalongo, had the Chrysler from 1961 to 1973. Then it passed to the doctor's son. Then to "a long list of connected individuals that ends with the last known owner, Leopoldo Nuñez Gutiérrez, in whose garage the vehicle was found." That final name perhaps pointing to some truth in the earlier stories.
    The convertible's bodywork will be repaired and repainted in the correct colours, Baker says. Its leather upholstery will be renewed. Its 331-cubic-inch hemi V-8 will fire once more.
    And then it will go on display near the Pilar, where visitors can see the car and the boat and imagine a different end to the Hemingway story. One in which the Cojimar villagers in the darkness hear one Chrysler engine stop and another start. And later, rising to prepare for the day, see the flash at sea that foretells the dawn.

Above, Mary Hemingway, driver Juan Lopez and the 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook. Below, the Pilar. Both: Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

Christopher P. Baker declares Cuba officially open to Americans

2011-05-02T19:09:00.002-04:00

You read it here second ─ Cuban travel now is open to every U.S. citizen.
Or so reports Christopher Baker on the Moon Travel Guides site, citing revised regulations published April 21 that he says confirm U.S. president Barack Obama's desire to ease the longstanding restrictions on travel between the two countries.

    "Pack your bags!" adds the intrepid travel writer. "Finally, it's time to go to Cuba."
    Well, maybe you shouldn't be stuffing socks into the Samsonite just yet. American access to Cuba does seem to have become easier, but it's hardly unfettered.
    Students, for example, now can travel to the island for course work for academic credit without first seeking written approval from the U.S. government. This pre-authorization was already available to Americans with close relatives in Cuba, and to journalists, professional researchers and others.
    Another change is the restoration of a provision allowing "educational exchanges," which Baker says can be as broadly defined as a visit by a minor baseball team to play Cuban club teams.

    But the students will need sponsorship by an accredited U.S. college. And those organizing educational exchanges will need written permission from the government before the exchange can take place.
    Education, you'll notice, is the key here. Or in Baker's words: "In essence, for the first time since the Clinton administration, virtually anyone with a serious rationale with an interest in learning can now find a way to visit Cuba legally."
    But what if you just want to sit on the seawall in Havana and watch old automobiles rumble along the Malecón? That's educational, to be sure, but would it be enough to secure the necessary sponsorship or authorization?
    Worry not, American students of automotive history. The Caristas College of Car-cheology stands prepared to fully support your expedition to the Great Cuban Car Show.
    Letters of support? Certificates of sponsorship? Yours for only a modest fee (somewhat extra if you also wish a Doctorate of Divinity that allows you to perform marriages).
   But, you ask, what if an official questions whether Caristas College is indeed an accredited U.S. school? To which we respond ─ Hey look! Isn't that a '52 Cadillac Series 62 sedan?

Top photo: 1955 Chevrolet sedan; centre: 1946-48 Plymouth; above: 1952 Cadillac.

Red, white and true

2011-04-27T23:15:00.001-04:00

The blue in Cuba's flag is said to represent the island's original three provinces, the red the blood that was shed for its freedom, and the white the purity of the patriotic cause and the absolute freedom of its people.
But perhaps on this day, the colours could also stand for a red-and-white (well, orangey-red-and-white) 1955 Ford Fairlane, making the turn from La Rampa to the Malecón under a blue February sky.

Another rental choice

2011-04-21T23:29:00.004-04:00

Samsung's SM3, left, and the Geely CK.

   Mention Samsung, and Canadians and Americans will think of cellphones, sewing machines and microwave ovens. In other markets, however, including as close as Cuba, Samsung also stands for cars, as I learned when I inquired about the make of a rental sedan bearing the designation "SM3 LE16" on its deck lid.
    So which, I asked, was better  the Korean-made Samsung, or the Chinese-built Geely CK parked alongside?
    "Samsung," came the prompt reply. "Renault engine."
    Well, close.
    Samsung began building cars in 1998, just as the Asian financial crisis took hold. Two years later it sold a majority stake in its auto division to Renault in a deal that included the use of the Samsung name until 2020.
    But rather than containing any Renault parts, the rather characterless sedan I saw in Cuba was actually a rebadged product of Renault's global partner, Nissan, dating back to the early 2000s. And looking at it, it did resemble a 2002 Altima.
    Not that there's anything wrong with a 2002 Altima.
    Since 2009, by the way, Samsung has offered a new SM3, this one based on the Renault Mégane. The older model, however, remains in production as the SM3 CE (for Classic Edition).
    Not sure if you can rent the new SM3 in Cuba, but if you're willing to go up the price ladder, I do notice that Samsung's SM5, based on the Renault Laguna, and SM7, a cousin to the Nissan Maxima, are available. Both look like quality choices.

SM3 has a Nissan 1.6-litre four-cylinder engine, CVT auto transmission.

Mechanical governors

2011-04-18T20:33:00.001-04:00

President Raúl Castro has called for term limits for Cuba's leaders, admitting that new blood is needed to replace the island's aging incumbents. "It's really embarrassing that we have not solved this problem in more than half a century," Castro said.
Perhaps this means a well-deserved retirement is finally in sight for Cuba's Studebaker Commanders and Presidents, Lincoln Premieres and Pontiac Star Chiefs  not to mention any surviving Volga General Secretary Mark IVs.

1950-52 Studebaker Commander (or maybe a Champion) in Vedado.

A Cuban car in America

2011-04-10T16:47:00.002-04:00

The last thing I expected to encounter at the Sarasota Classic Car Museum  or anywhere, really  was a made-in-Cuba vehicle.
    Yet parked at the back of a display in the rambling Florida museum was a 1905 Rapid depot hack, its manufacturer listed as the Havana Carriage Co.
    Cuba produced cars? Who knew?
    With three rows of seats and a surrey-style fringed roof, the Rapid looks largely like a traditional horse-drawn depot hack, so named for its role ferrying passengers and baggage between rail station and hotels.

    Below its red wooden body, however, a two-cylinder gasoline engine and live rear axle allow it to move under its own power while the driver steers the front axle with a tiller handle.
    It's a safe guess the powertrain came from the Rapid Motor Vehicle Co. of Michigan, formed in 1902 to produce 12-passenger Pullman cars, sight-seeing buses and other commercial vehicles. In 1909 General Motors would acquire Rapid as the basis for its GMC trucks division.
    In advertisements, the Rapid Co. boasted of its ability to equip its vehicles with bodies to "suit your special requirements." In this case, however, the chassis would have been turned over to the Havana Carriage Co. to complete, a common practice for automakers at the time.
    How this early automobile came to the United States isn't stated, and the only visible clues to its history are a pair of California Horseless Carriage licence plates, still attached, from 1967.
    Of course, the Rapid depot hack is hardly the first Cuban to find residence in Florida.

A real ragtop

2011-04-06T09:23:00.002-04:00

With fenders from 1954, a bumper from 1955 and a hood badge from  when?  '53?  this Pontiac Chieftain Deluxe might be a product of the Johnny Cash assembly line.
    Without question, however, our Pontiac is a true convertible, and not some hacksawed hardtop. And even with its bruised flanks and tattered interior, an innate elegance shines through.
   The straight-eight engine, turning over so slowly at idle, tells us the Chieftain is in fact a '54, the final year for Pontiac's torquey inline flathead. The Canadian flag on the antenna could be the driver's tribute to the generous visitors he encounters on this resort road near Santa Cruz del Norte.

2011-03-26T18:28:00.000-04:00

Heading to Florida for some automotive fact-finding, and won't be able to post for a few days. If I need to grab a cab at the Tampa airport, I bet it looks nothing like this.

Juan Gualberto Gómez Airport: 1954 Chevrolet.

Exact fare: 3 pesos or 2 guilders

2011-03-23T20:29:00.002-04:00

Circa-1980 DAF bus, built in the Netherlands.

If this truly is a zero-sum universe, does that mean some old Cuban bus with a "HABANA DEL ESTE" destination board is just now leaving Eindhoven?

See also The Busman's Paradise

The accidented tourists

2011-03-19T13:08:00.003-04:00

      Prolific photographer Robin Thom took this shot in Cascorro, a small town on the Carretera Central in the eastern part of the island. White Hyundai Accents, as far as I've seen, are used exclusively in Cuba as rental cars, and are usually driven by foreign visitors.
    Cascorro, by the way, is just west of Camegüey, the city that was Cody LeCompte's destination when his rental Accent was struck broadside by a dump truck, injuring the Canadian teenager and three passengers and triggering LeCompte's detainment on the island until public and political pressure secured his release.
    This photo, however, was taken before LeCompte's April 2010 collision, so his Accent is not among these battered examples.
    To see more -- much more! -- of Robin Thom's work, including an outstanding array of Cuban car images, check out his portfolio on Flickr.

And a blue-plate puzzle

2011-03-16T22:38:00.000-04:00

Cuba wouldn't be Cuba without its mysteries. Take a close look at this 1960 Chevrolet Impala taxi. Yes, it's a four-door convertible. Chevy made a modern-era phaeton?

Well, no, but someone in Havana did. A vestigial C-pillar bears evidence of the Chevy's original configuration as a 4-Door Sport Sedan (which, despite its name, was actually a hardtop).

Another puzzle: the Chevy has a taxi light (from Havana's now-defunct OK line) and blue government plates, but no Gran Car logos on its doors. And given its rusty fenders and tattered interior -- not to mention its crude conversion -- it's unlikely to be part of that agency's fleet of classics.
So is the Impala an Imposter?

Blue-plate specials

2011-03-13T23:19:00.000-04:00

1956 Chevrolet awaits fare at the Hotel Nacional

    For a classic view of Cuba, visitors need only hire one of the bright-painted old convertibles or sedans of the Gran Car taxi service.
    The state agency's fleet consists exclusively of pre-1960 American vehicles, all bearing the blue licence plates that signify government ownership. The service was launched in 1997 at the urging of the Gran Caribe Group, the Cuban hotel operator, which had taken note of the enthusiasm tourists display toward the island's vintage cars.
    Starting with a handful of classics in Havana, Gran Car by 2008 had 66 old Chevrolets, Studebakers and other makes touring the capital and the Varadero resort area, with plans to expand to Cienfuegos, Trinidad and Santiago de Cuba. Celebrity passengers have reportedly included Naomi Campbell, Jack Nicholson and cigar-fancier Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Two more Chevies: a '51 in white, and a '54 in pink.

    In a 2008 interview with cubanow.net, Gran Car marketing manager Domingo Pérez said many of the cars have been fitted with newer Russian engines because of the difficulty getting parts from the U.S. All, however, all remain original in outward appearance.
    The cars are selected from "deposits" -- stores of old cars perhaps ceded to the government when their owners died or left the island -- from across Cuba. The agency also operates classic replicas that look like 1930s Ford roadsters and are powered by Volkswagen engines.
   Gran Car's taxis have no meters and can be hired at an hourly rate of 25 CUCs (about $26.30 Canadian), according to the latest figures I could find. Convertibles are extra. There are also daily rates, plus set fees for specified trips.
    All fees include a driver. These aren't rental cars that you drive yourself. According to Pérez, the drivers are required to be skilled mechanics, and their understanding of the decades-old vehicles helps keep the cars on the road. Fears of frequent breakdowns at the introduction of Gran Car were soon allayed.
    "Those drivers must love their job, as they are the heart of the whole operation, Pérez says.
    In Havana, Gran Car taxis are stationed at the Hotel Nacional, near the Riviera and Cohiba hotels and outside the Capitolio building. You can't miss them.

1955 Buick Century makes a fine photo backdrop.

White wedding, white car

2011-03-09T23:27:00.001-05:00

Eager to catch the late afternoon sun, the bride and her party arrive on the terrace of the Hotel Nacional, the premier spot in Havana to take wedding photos.

The young attendants hurry to catch up.

Outside, waiting to take the newlyweds on the traditional tour of the city in his 1956 Ford convertible, their driver does not share their sense of urgency.

Lincoln Cosmopolitan: Roundly different

2011-03-05T15:28:00.000-05:00

Lincoln Cosmopolitan Sport Sedan; $3,238 new in the U.S. in 1949.

    Not everyone in Havana bought Cadillacs. Some bought Lincolns -- like this Cosmopolitan Sport Sedan, introduced as the top-of-the-line model for Ford's luxury division for 1949.
   The Fords and Lincolns of that year were the manufacturer's first all-new cars since before the Second World War, and the Cosmopolitan's bathtub styling could not have been more of a departure from the formal, full-fendered lines of the 1947-48 Lincolns.
   With a 125-inch wheelbase, the Cosmopolitan had plenty of room for six on the chesterfield-like seats of its big cabin, and a comfortable ride from a new independent front suspension with coil springs. Its engine, however, was not-so-new: in place of the V-12 that resided under the impossibly long hoods of earlier Lincolns was a 337-cubic-inch flathead V-8 adapted from a Ford truck engine.
   The big Cosmopolitan model existed for just three years; the name was assigned to a lower Lincoln series in 1952 and disappeared in 1954. But this Cosmo has been roundly visible in Havana for more than six decades. Now a peso cab in the Vedado district, it's lost a few pieces of brightwork and had some eye surgery, with flat-mounted headlamps replacing the original lights that were set deep within chrome bezels. Yet it remains impressive, delivering a message of worldly luxury in the Cuban capital.

Call me a classic cab

2011-02-28T22:50:00.000-05:00

Until this year, private taxis in Cuba weren't supposed to pick up tourists. Visitors who wanted a ride in one of the island's famous old cars had to be satisfied with the small fleet of government-owned classics operating from the Hotel Nacional in Havana, or make an under-the-table deal with a car owner and hope they weren't stopped by police.
Then, late in 2010, in an effort to breathe some entrepreneurial life into Cuba's slumbering, state-run economy, the government announced that 178 self-employment activities would now be permitted. Among them: the transportation of passengers without restriction.
Now, visitors can see the sights from cars like this sparkling 1957 Ford Fairline Town Sedan without fear of sparking an international incident.

18 to drive, but not to rent

2011-02-24T20:39:00.000-05:00

The minimum driving age in Cuba is 18. Some sites say 21, but that's to rent a car (it's 25 or even 30 for certain agencies and models). But in a country where incomes and car-ownership rates are low, you don't see many young drivers. And regardless of the applicant's age, getting a licence in Cuba isn't easy, as Here Is Havana author Conner Gorry explains so colourfully here.

Strollers and a '54 Chevy in Matanzas.

Three to get ready

2011-02-10T22:51:00.001-05:00

Another great Havana shot from Tony Robertson. Looks like a 1956 Ford sedan at centre and a 1958 Ford Thunderbird hardtop on the right. And the red-and-white monster on the left? My best guess is a 1949 Buick with a custom grille.

Leave the driving to them

2011-02-02T23:13:00.001-05:00

We're heading to Cuba soon. And for the first time in a long time, we haven't booked a rental car.
It's not that I fear to drive there, though I'd certainly want to be cautious, given the experiences of Cody LeCompte, the young Canadian forced to remain on the island after a traffic accident until public and government pressure helped win his release (see Driving In Cuba Reconsidered).
It's more about the money. Last year we paid nearly $400 for a subcompact for three days. (I see the rates have dropped a bit since, probably because of the strength of the Canadian dollar).
Following the advice of the Cuba hands on Trip Advisor and the more prickly types at the (well named) Thorn Tree travel forum, we'll probably hire someone with a car -- not an official taxi -- to take us where we want to go. It should be cheaper than a rental, and will certainly be interesting.
In fact, we did just this -- hired a car and driver -- on our first visit, years ago. He brought us to an overpriced restaurant and other places that, we realized later, no doubt gave him kickbacks. We bought him lunch, too. Es Cuba.
Or maybe we'll just rent a car when we get there.


Road-ready, if not quite reassembled.

Geely. Prounced Jee-lee. Or in Cuba, Heely

2011-01-24T19:53:00.002-05:00

The Geely MK: Smart styling, uneven materials.

Reserve a rental car for your Cuban holiday, and chances are you'll find a Geely waiting for you.
A product of China's largest independent automaker, the Geely has become Cuba's fleet car of choice. Since 2008 Geely has supplied nearly 5,000 sedans to replace the island's much-travelled Hyundai taxis and rental cars, and its purely ancient Lada police cars. The manufacturer reports that it has orders for more cars, these with automatic transaxles, and has set up a parts depot in Cuba to support its growing presence.
Geely is meant to be pronounced with a soft "g," as in Jili, a Mandarin word meaning auspicious or lucky. In Cuba, however, you're more likely to hear it as "Heely" -- not to be confused with those kamikaze roller-shoes of a few years ago.
Geely is scarcely older than Heelys. Founded in 1986 by entrepreneur Li Shufu to make refrigerator parts, it expanded to motorcycles in 1994 and cars in 1998. Today, billionaire Li is among the richest residents of China (which, unlike Cuba, long ago moved away from a centrally planned economy).
Cuba police get the Geely CK, a small sedan from the round-and-bland Asian design school of the early 2000s, but with some baby-Mercedes flair in its complex headlamps and sloping nose. Its inner working include a platform from Korea's Daewoo (pre General Motors acquisition) and a 1.5-litre engine licensed from Toyota.

Who stole the handle?

I saw a CK at the 2006 Detroit Auto Show and remember its thin felt floor coverings. The CK is better known, however, for disastrous safety ratings. A Russian car magazine crash-tested a CK with no airbags and estimated the survival chance of driver and passenger at just 10 per cent. A South American test gave the CK a zero out of five potential stars for occupant protection. These safety concerns and the need to meet tough emission standards help explain why Geely has yet to enter the North American market.
The Geelys I saw at my rental agency in Cuba were MKs, newer and larger than the CK and more distinctive in their styling, with slightly concave sides below a pronounced beltline crease that gives this model a sporty rake. Good news for renters: The MK sedan has achieved much better crash scores, earning a 3.5- to 4-star rating from Britain's certification agency, and a full five stars from the new testing agency in China (where, by the way, the MK is known as the Kingkong, not to be confused with the KrAZ truck also common in Cuba).
Outside, the MKs looked well-finished, though not particularly rugged -- one was already missing some side trim, and another has lost its passenger door handle. I didn't rent one (I always seem to get the same Hyundai Accent), but I did take one for a spin.
With rough edges, a hard-plastic dash and thin headliner (more of that carpet felt?), my car's interior didn't match the exterior quality. It did, however, contain power windows, air conditioning and other features you'd want, and its big, well-padded seats seemed up to standard.
The engine started easily, though it was buzzier than those of competing small cars, and the clutch action in my manual-transmission car was uneven. Shift action, on the other hand, was emphatic, thanks to a stout, truck-worthy shift lever and heavy counterweights on the under-hood transmission linkage.
    The car rode along well enough in my short trip, and felt more substantial than its compact size would suggest. The rental staff told me the Geelys use more gas than the Hyundais.
   The MK is proof of both the speed of Geely's progress in just 13 years as carmaker and the difficulty of building to the modern automotive standard. It looks good and its operation is acceptable (and just a few years ago might have been considered praiseworthy), but it lacks the uniform quality of established automakers the world over. It reminded me a bit of the Volvos my family drove in the 1960s and '70s, cars with tank-like frames and headlamp switches that would come off in your hand.
   Volvo has moved upmarket, with overall quality levels today that are a match to its famous safety standard. And Volvo -- who'd have thought it? -- is lately owned by Geely, which picked up the Swedish carmaker from Ford Motor Co. for $1.5 billion U.S. in August 2010.
   The acquisition is the latest gamble for Li Shufu, who has promised to give Volvo "independence and autonomy." He wants to double its sales by 2015, and believes much of that growth can come in China.
   Even as Volvo expands, however, we can be sure that the brand's know-how and technology will be flowing to Li's other plants, and that future Geelys will be safer and better constructed because of it.
   Heelys, in contrast, don't seem to be getting any better.


The MK is larger than Geely's earlier CK, and has better safety ratings.

Geely website: Brands and models.

A Cushman, no, a Cusman, in Cuba

2011-01-12T20:07:00.003-05:00

Pretty scooters come from Italy. For rugged scooters, the source for three decades was Lincoln, Nebraska, home of the Cushman Corp. factory that turned out tough, reliable two-wheelers between 1936 and 1965.
Cushman's most famous product? The Military Airborne Model 53, a foldable, lightweight scooter designed to be dropped with parachute troops in World War Two. It didn't work out so well on the battlefield, but is much valued by collectors today.

I saw this step-through Model 52 or 54 Cushman -- never mind the missing "h" -- in Varadero. Built, as it says, in 1948, it's had some reworking over the years. The tube-style forks and front disc brake, for example, would have been later additions, and the cowling has received some well-executed aluminum patches. I couldn't tell if that cowling concealed the original 221-cc, 4-horsepower engine. The bucket, I figure, serves as storage compartment.
The Cushman name lives on as a line of light industrial trucks produced by a subsidiary of Textron Inc. in Augusta, Georgia. And this '48 Cushman survives as an economical means of daily transportation in Cuba.

A good site about Cushmans.

Interesting piece on the Airborne model.

The Cushman company today.

The sweetest '55 in Cuba

2011-01-06T20:28:00.003-05:00

   Maybe it's because we share a birth year, but I've always thought of the 1955 Chevrolet as the first car of the modern automotive era. Certainly, it merits landmark status for the eager small-block V-8 it introduced; descendants of that engine can be found all over, including under the hood of my 2009 pickup.
    But to me, it's the balance of the 55's proportions -- the roundness of its profile and the squareness of its stance -- that sets it apart. Look at it, and you see more of the cars that arrived later than those that came before.
For collectors, the '55 Chevy to have is the two-door Nomad station wagon, of which just 8,386 were built. But for my money (and I'd need a lot of it to buy one), the Bel Air convertible is nicer yet. Chevrolet made 41,292 of the ragtops, and you know every one was a smile-producer.
   Like this example parked at Juan Gualberto Gómez Airport. From bright grille to period-perfect Continental kit for the spare tire, this was a show-quality car. Notably, it remains in private ownership, unlike many of Cuba's best classic convertibles that now bear blue government plates and ferry tourists around Vedado.
   If there's a sweeter '55 on the island, I'd like to see it.

Same 'Vette, different view

2011-01-01T13:35:00.003-05:00

Tony Robertson's image of a 1959 Chevrolet Corvette in Havana (Dec. 6, 2009: "Another Corvette in Cuba") continues to draw interest. This undated photo, supplied by a friend of CARISTAS, shows what is almost certainly the same car.

Happy Holiday

2010-12-26T16:36:00.001-05:00

Here's a group of cheerful motorists, and why wouldn't they be? Their royal ride is a Super 88 Holiday hardtop model of the 1958 Oldsmobile, a car renowned as the "King of Chrome." Michael Roy photographed car and occupants near Havana.

Photo: Michael Roy. Used with permission.

More Isetta photos

2010-12-22T20:05:00.000-05:00

An Isetta in Cuba: Ready for another 50 years

2010-12-17T18:45:00.002-05:00

The last time I visited "Maynardo," I brought along schematics of BMW Isetta innards, photos of various Isetta colour schemes, detailed lists of model changes and production numbers -- anything I could find that might help him repair his German microcar.
But Maynardo, it turned out, was already familiar with every nut, bolt and lock washer on his 1950s Bubble Window Isetta 300. And the car that had looked so rough just months earlier now stood fully rehabbed with two-tone paint, chrome luggage rack and fresh knobby tires. No longer did starting it require blowing into the gas tank and touching together two wires; with a turn of the ignition key, the engine fired immediately and settled into a smooth idle.

Readers who saw my earlier photos have noted that this Isetta's single-cylinder engine did not look like the original BMW unit, and Maynardo confirmed that it is a Russian powerplant of some sort. Output is unknown, but probably more than the original's 13 horsepower. We went for a ride and, even going up a steep hill in third gear, it pushed strongly.
Another question: Is this a real, and thus rare, 300 B/W Isetta Cabriolet Tropical, or one of the many regular 300s that has been converted to a Tropical by the substitution of a convertible roof for the rear glass? I don't know, but if it was converted at some point in its long history, the job appears to have been done well. I like to think it is an original.
For purists who take issue with the added lights and mirrors, the non-stock instrument panel and other modifications, bear in mind the limited resources available to the Cuban car owner. Remember, too, that in Cuba, cars are for transportation, no matter how rare and collectible they might be elsewhere. This microcar has probably been in regular service for more than five decades, and it will be expected to continue such service for years to come.
I think Maynardo has done a superb job with it.

See also:

Come for a ride in a BMW Isetta

Did I Say Isetta 250?

More photos

KrAZ: The King Kong of trucks

2010-12-12T20:57:00.001-05:00

Imagine entering one of these babies in a Monster Truck event. Look out, Grave Digger and Bigfoot -- the KrAZ is going to eat you!
Falling somewhere between an American Mack transport and a Russian battleship, the KrAZ comes from a factory that was built in Kremenchug, Ukraine, after the Second World War to produce bridges and farming equipment and, from 1959, heavy-duty trucks. Very heavy-duty.
I saw this KrAZ, a flatbed converted into a bus, plowing through Matanzas. Heard it, too. It looks like a KrAZ-257, from a series built from the mid-1960s well into the 1980s. Sister models included a tractor trailer (KrAZ-258), dump truck (KrAZ-256) and six-wheel-drive flatbed (KrAZ-255) built for military use and other off-road applications.
According to the SovAvto Catalog, the 257 weighs in, unloaded, at 11,500 kilograms, or more than 12 tons. Cargo capacity is 10,000 kg or 22,000 pounds. It has a dual-range five-speed transmission and 14.9-litre diesel V-8 engine rated at 215 horsepower in early models, rising later to 240 h.p. Fuel consumption is listed at 45 litres per 100 kilometres or 6.3 miles per (imperial) gallon, and judging by the anvil-on-wheels look of this machine, even that sounds optimistic.
KrAZ became a private company after the Soviet era and today operates as the AvtoKrAZ Holding Group, part of the Finance and Credit Bank conglomerate controlled by Kostyantin Zhevago, a 36-year-old Ukrainian billionaire.
Its massive, perhaps indestructible trucks continue to operate around the world, from Argentina to Vietnam. Hundreds lumber along the rough roads of Cuba, which in 2009 began a joint program with AvtoKrAZ to rebuild as many as 430 dump trucks that have been in constant use for 30 years. Meantime, a new assembly line in Cienfuegos (no doubt a "knock-down" or "kit" plant) was to produce 300 to 500 new KrAZ vehicles, mainly concrete mix trucks.

See also:

In Soviet Russia, truck owns you!

One truck, many makers

One smokin' Lada!

2010-11-28T12:06:00.002-05:00

Russia's state-owned Ria Novosti news agency provides this English-language report. More than a bit of cheer-leading going on, but still, a Lada fun. (Sorry.)

Two more owners, one final name

2010-11-19T19:43:00.009-05:00


Docked in Bremerhaven: 'inadequate' sanitary facilities.

(Last of a series)

   The navy wanted two dock landing ships, and it didn't want to wait the five or six years it would take to build them. A partial solution seemed at hand. The S/S City of Havana, a onetime dock landing ship converted into an automobile ferry, was available, and could be returned to its original purpose.
   That the navy belonged to Germany, and the City of Havana, ex HMS Northway, ex HMS Cutlass, had been built to aid in that nation's defeat, would not have raised eyebrows. Warships have traded between combatants -- past, future, even current -- throughout history. And the Second World War, though hardly forgotten, was by 1962 a sealed chapter, supplanted in public attention by a Cold War in which Germany, or at least the 11 states then making up the federal republic, was on the side of democracy. The mission of its navy: control the approaches to the Baltic Sea and, if necessary, contain the Soviet Union's Baltic Fleet.
   The landing ship plan soured fast. After buying the City of Havana for 400,000 marks, authorities discovered it was "too fat-bellied" to fit through a lock to its intended berth at Wilhelmshaven, the news magazine Der Spiegel would report. The ship moved on to Bremerhaven, where it sat idle while military agencies argued over conversion costs that had ballooned to 30 million marks from an initial estimate of six million.
   In late 1963, the landing ship program was cancelled. The City of Havana became a barge and then a barracks ship, until military doctors ruled that "the hygienic and sanitary facilities were inadequate," Der Spiegel reported. By 1967, the Germans wanted rid of it.
   Yet even that was a problem. Greek shipowner Spyros Typaldos agreed to buy the vessel, its Caribbean white paint now fading, then defaulted on the payment. The City of Havana went to auction and was picked up for $1.5 million U.S. -- much less than the Germans had invested in it -- by the London-headquartered Atlantic Steam Navigation Co., which promptly packed it off to the Palmers Shipbuilders yard at Heburn-on-Tyne.
   From there it would emerge with a new, and final, name, the SS Celtic Ferry, a reworked superstructure and a glossy black hull. Even Uglyships.com would admit that the former awkward duckling, was now, if not quite a swan, certainly "much more presentable."
   For five years, the Celtic Ferry would serve as a roll-on, roll-off vehicle transporter between Antwerp, Rotterdam and the Suffolk, England port of Felixstowe. And then in 1972 this ship of many names and much commercial service, veteran of world war and cold war and one of the last links between the United States and Cuba, an "ugly ship" that would be prosaic witness to some of the most significant events of the 20th century, made its last run across the North Sea, and was scrapped.

Redemption as the SS Celtic Ferry.

Photos: Top,Gerhard Mueller-Debus via www.navsource.org; Above, http://www.photoship.co.uk

That ship has sailed

2010-10-31T14:05:00.007-04:00

(Second of a series)

   One day, the restrictions on travel between the United States and Cuba will end. When it arrives, business people in Key West, Florida, hope their city can again be the U.S. gateway to the island just 94 miles to the south.
   The resumption of automobile ferry service between Key West and Cuba could help make that happen. But it won't be on the S/S City of Havana, the steamship that carried cars and their passengers between the two nations from March 1956 to October 1960.
   The City of Havana was built for a different purpose. It was launched at   Newport News, Virginia, in late 1943 as HMS Cutlass, one of four dock landing ships earmarked for Britain's Royal Navy under the U.S. Lend-Lease Act. Unadorned and awkward of line, the 458-foot vessel would one day earn mention on a website dedicated to the "ugly ships" of the world.
   But it was wartime-practical, with a deep centre well that could be flooded to discharge a cargo of landing craft or other amphibious vehicles or kept dry for the transport of trucks and tanks. Two Skinner UnaFlow five-cylinder reciprocating steam engines, fed by a pair of huge oil-fired boilers, could propel it at 18 knots. Lining its upper structure were sixteen anti-aircraft guns and a three-inch/50-calibre "dual-purpose" gun that could defend against enemies in the air or on the surface.

   The British took delivery of the Cutlass in February 1944, renamed it the HMS Northway and added four two-pound "pom-pom" autocannon to its armaments.
   Records show it in action for just one day, but that day was momentous.
   Early on June 6, 1944, the Northway set out from England carrying 46 DUKWs, the amphibious trucks known as "Ducks." Shortly after 6 p.m. it discharged the Ducks and their crews at Juno Beach, a stretch of Normandy coastline by then under the control of the Canadian troops whose D-Day mission was to secure it.
   After the Second World War, the Northway was returned to the U.S. Maritime Commission, and a year later sold to Atlas Metal Corp.for disposal. How it spent the next decade is not recorded, but in 1956 it would re-emerge, stripped of its guns and painted shiny, peacetime white, as the City of Havana.
   Its new owner was the West India Fruit and Steamship Co., an American concern (despite its exotic name) that already operated five railcar ferries between Florida and Cuba. With the City of Havana, its first (and only) auto and passenger ferry, the company was entering new territory, but its expansion was well-timed: more and more vacationers were setting out on the U.S.'s new Interstate Highway System, looking for holiday adventure.
   And adventure was what West India promised. In advertisements, it urged motorists to travel south from Miami along the bridge-lined U.S. Highway 1, known as the Overseas Highway, and then, at Key West, to drive on to the City of Havana. After a daylight cruise across the Straits of Florida, they could roll off the ferry "to tour the enchanting, historical tropical Island of Cuba via the paved, 700-mile Central Highway traversing the Island from east to west."
   According to keywest2havana.com, a website launched by Key West History magazine to build interest in renewed links with Cuba, a round trip cost $76 per car and $23.50 per person. Passengers who didn't wish to spend the seven-hour trip on deck or in the lounge, snack bar or beverage bar could reserve an air-conditioned stateroom for $10. The City of Havana, with room for 500 passengers, 125 autos and eight rail cars, would make the round trip as often as three times a week until service ended in 1960.
   According to an Associated Press report in the Ocala, Florida, Star-Banner, the last departure from Cuba on Oct. 31 was delayed for five hours while authorities searched the vessel. "The militia men went through the ship again and again before they let us go," a passenger told an American reporter.
   The West India company, however, said that poor patronage, not Cuban government interference, forced it to cancel the ferry service. In its final months on the route, the ship was making just one return trip weekly.
   The nations responsible for building the S/S City of Havana could never have predicted the next flag that would fly over the former dock landing ship.

The last cars out of Cuba

2010-10-09T12:59:00.008-04:00

Returning to home soil. Photo courtesy of Key West History.

(First of a series)

   It's Oct. 31, 1960, and the SS City of Havana, an automobile and passenger ferry that began life as a Second World War landing craft carrier, is easing to its berth at Safe Harbor in Key West, Florida.
   Sixteen years earlier, this vessel, then known as HMS Northway, carried amphibious trucks and their Canadian and British crews to Juno Beach in the Normandy Invasion. But on this day, those aboard are fleeing, not approaching, conflict. Of the 287 passengers, 232 are Cuban citizens who hold United States residence permits, key to their own economic and political safe harbour.
   Also aboard are 86 cars, of which most belong to the U.S. embassy in Havana. After imposing an embargo on trade with Cuba in retaliation for the Castro government's seizure of U.S. property and alignment with the Soviet Union, the United States now is cutting diplomatic ties. This photo, taken upon the City of Havana's arrival and provided by Key West History magazine, shows rows of government-issue Ford and Chevy sedans, awaiting repatriation.
   In coming years, many more Cuban citizens will find their way to Florida. But this is the ferry's final trip between Key West and Havana, and these will be the last cars out of Cuba.

The view at Bacunayagua

2010-09-25T13:14:00.002-04:00

An elegance of concrete, the Bacunayagua Bridge soars over the seemingly bottomless gorge that separates the provinces of Havana and Matanzas. And higher yet is El Mirador de Bacunayagua, the coffee bar/gift shop/piña colada stand that overlooks the bridge and the great, green YumuríValley.
El Mirador reminds me of the Castle Rock lookout over Lake Huron near St. Ignace, Michigan. I remember riding down Interstate 75 in the back of the family '66 Buick Le Sabre, hoping we'd stop at Castle Rock, or at the nearby "Mystery Spot" where gravity was said to be more suggestion than law (and which I now know is a "tilt-induced visual illusion"; another secret spoiled by Wikipedia). But never once do I recall my parents pulling into a tourist trap.

I've turned into El Mirador, more than once. It's cheesy, of course, but that's part of its charm. And its observation platforms are a perfect place to view the circling buitres -- for once, you are above them -- and the modern tourist buses and smoke-trailing 1950s sedans crossing the bridge that at 103 metres is the highest in Cuba.
And wait, that green 1959 Oldsmobile, approaching on the Via Blanca. Could that be Fidel Castro and Celia Sánchez, coming to inspect the newly built bridge in September 1959?
Perhaps El Mirador de Bacunayagua is Cuba's Mystery Spot.

Cuban women drivers

2010-09-04T12:10:00.000-04:00

It's almost always a man at the wheel in Cuba (apart from coco taxis, which, come to think of it, have handlebars, not steering wheels), but Michael Roy caught this image of a woman at the helm of a shiny-as-a-new-penny '55 Chevrolet. And the driver appears to be using her turn indicator -- another uncommon sight.

See Baby You Can't Drive My Car.

See Baby You CAN Drive My Coco Taxi.

Post No. 101

2010-08-27T20:58:00.003-04:00

Like a '56 Chevy, Caristas keeps ticking along.

1956 Chevrolet 210 four-door sedan in Varadero.

A Healey in Havana

2010-08-26T20:44:00.003-04:00

Those MGAs running around Cuba (Sports Car Sightings, May 30) have a worthy counterpart in the form of a 1953-1956 Austin-Healey 100. There's a great photo of it at CUBANCLASSICS, accompanied by some interesting notes on early Healey history.

When Mercedes met Fargo

2010-08-15T12:40:00.000-04:00

This, we can be fairly certain, is NOT the truck that hit Cody LeCompte's Hyundai. Advertised recently on www.revolico.com, the site known as the "Cuban Craigslist," it looks, in fact, like it rarely leaves its driveway (which, incidentally, seems as well-finished as the vehicle it is home to).
By sheetmetal, this big flatbed is a 1952 Fargo, a Chrysler brand for Canada and export markets that was closely related to the manufacturer's line of Dodge commercial vehicles. Under that green hood, however, is a six-cylinder Mercedes-Benz OM352 diesel engine displacing 5.7 litres. The OM352 was used in tractors and industrial applications, as well as in the Mercedes-Benz Unimog and other vehicles. The transmission is apparently a six-speed unit from Spanish automaker Pegaso.
Other goodies: hydraulic power steering, air-suspension seats, custom second-row seating and a whole bunch of diamond-plate.
Asking price for what has to be a one-of-a-kind machine: 20,000 CUC, or about $22,500 Cdn.

Driving in Cuba, reconsidered

2010-08-01T13:36:00.000-04:00

Should you get behind the wheel in Cuba? Should I?
The case of Cody LeCompte, the Canadian teenager held on the island after a collision until public pressure helped secure his (pending) release, should have us all thinking about the risks of renting a car there.
Canada's Foreign Affairs department, we know, has long advised against driving in Cuba, and several Cuba hands whose opinions I respect tell me they prefer to leave the driving to others when they visit the Caribbean nation.
Still, LeCompte's experience, as best I can tell, was rare. Despite widespread claims that such detentions happen regularly, only one other documented case emerged in all the attention that Cody's story received in the press and on sites such as Facebook. And that one was, well, complicated.
"Anne," an Eastern Ontario woman who didn't want her full name published, told the Ottawa Citizen she was held in Cuba for a full year after a February 2008 accident in which two Cubans were killed.
She had rented the car on the Varadero resort peninsula, but said a Cuban friend was driving when it left the pavement and rolled over several times, ejecting the two passengers who died. The friend, however, insisted to police that Anne had been behind the wheel.
By the time she was finally acquitted -- and again, it's not true that you are "presumed guilty" in Cuba until you can prove your innocence -- Anne was $40,000 in debt and had lost the hair salon she had operated from her home in Canada.
Cody's case was less serious. No one died. No one disputed who was driving. Forcing a visitor to remain for months for an investigation to unfold at the pace of a Cuban snail was unreasonable -- a point the Canadian government finally made to the Cuban authorities.
But as said, it was rare. That may not give much comfort to Cody and his family, but it should give others confidence that they can rent a car and drive in Cuba without major risk, especially if they take time to learn beforehand about its conditions and laws.
Which brings us to the CARISTAS 10 TIPS FOR DRIVING IN CUBA, revised in view of the recent events.

Cody LeCompte: Cuba Libre!

2010-07-28T22:59:00.004-04:00

Cody, Danette in Cuba

Yesterday, Danette LeCompte said in a Facebook posting that she had been told by Diane Finley, Canada's citizenship minister as well as LeCompte's local Member of Parliament, that "our dealing with the press is hurting our position." LeCompte's response? "We believe that had the press not been involved, nothing would have happened."
Hard to argue. After weeks of Canadian government inaction while LeCompte's 19-year-old son, Cody, was detained in Cuba, recent media attention spurred another cabinet minister, Peter Kent, to call in Cuban officials to "express concern" about the lengthy investigation into an April car accident in which Cody was involved.
That was yesterday. According to reports today, the LeComptes were called to a meeting at a Cuban police station at which they were told Cody will be able to leave as early as next week. The family posted bail of about $2,200 Cdn. and agreed that Cody would return for a trial, should one be ordered.

See also:

Driving in Cuba, reconsidered

Cody: Still presumed innocent

2010-07-22T12:21:00.003-04:00

Cody Lecompte

A story today in the Toronto Sun suggests Cody LeCompte is being held in Cuba because of a "a “bizarre” law requiring a driver to prove innocence after any traffic accident that causes death or injury. "You’re guilty until proven innocent,” Cody's mother, Danette LeCompte, told the newspaper.
While it certainly might seem this way to the LeComptes, the reality is that Cuba, like many nations, considers an accused person innocent until proven otherwise. "The burden of proof lies with the prosecution," according to a primer on Cuban law published by the country's ministry of external relations.
Even foes of the Communist government admit that the presumption of innocence, a principle that dates to ancient Rome, applies in Cuba. The Florida-based Cuba Free Press Project cites Article 3 of Cuba's Rules of Criminal Procedures, which reads: "Every defendant is presumed innocent until sentenced."
The authors, however, note that the code also allows an accused to be prosecuted and detained without the defence being informed of these actions. It's difficult to reconcile this denial of the right to a fair trial -- another basic premise of legal systems -- with any earlier presumption of innocence.
This approach, though, seems mainly to apply to cases of political dissent. Other accused, such as Cody LeCompte, can expect to get their due process -- in the fullness of Cuban time.

Buick, inside and out

2010-07-20T23:54:00.001-04:00

Here's further proof that not every old car in Cuba is powered by an engine from a Lada or a Volga. This 1960 Buick Le Sabre (like the Buick in the CARISTAS logo, but in better shape) was photographed by Michael Roy. Inside the nicely detailed engine compartment can be seen a 364-cubic-inch Buick "Nailhead" V-8.
OK, maybe the carburetor isn't original, but that doesn't take away from the authenticity of this 50-year-old daily driver.

Cody LeCompte: Justice delayed

2010-07-07T19:23:00.002-04:00

Couple of interesting developments in the LeCompte case. First, despite earlier reports, it appears no decision has been made on whether the 19-year-old will face a criminal trial for the April traffic accident in which one of his passengers was seriously injured. According to the Canadian Press, the Simcoe, Ont., teen was told by his Cuban lawyer that a hearing to determine whether he "faces any charges" will not take place for at least another month.
My guess is he already faces charges, and the court proceeding will be some type of preliminary inquiry to establish whether enough evidence exists to warrant a trial. The Cuban justice system, though modified with Marxist-Leninist legal theory and mysterious to outsiders (and certain Cubans as well), is rooted in Spanish and American law, suggesting such an approach would be followed.
The hearing might also be the moment when LeCompte is allowed to plead guilty, pay a fine and leave Cuba, perhaps in time for the start of his studies in the aviation program at Sault College.
If a trial is ordered, it will be before a judge alone. Cuba does not have a jury system.
Second development: The revelation that LeCompte was listed as a driver on the agreement filled out by the agency providing the rental Hyundai, despite being too young to legally operate a vehicle in Cuba. This is surprising, given the scrutiny my licence has received every time I've rented a car in Cuba. Alone, it may not exonerate him, but it certainly won't help the prosectors' case.
The teen's mother, Danette LeCompte, says she's already spent $12,000 on costs that include boarding Cody at the Gran Club resort in Santa Lucia while he awaits a decision on his fate.
As of today, the Help Cody LeCompte group on Facebook has 205 members.

Friends rally to free Cody LeCompte

2010-06-26T00:07:00.000-04:00

Took a bit longer than I expected, but a group called Help Cody LeCompte has been set up on Facebook. There you can find details about the bank account where donations can be made to help with accommodation and other costs while the young Canadian awaits trial, and the barbecue fundraiser scheduled for July 13 at the Simcoe, Ontario, courthouse. At this writing, 106 people have joined the group.

That answers that

2010-06-20T23:50:00.001-04:00

According to the Toronto Globe and Mail, Cody LeCompte's mother is paying about $360 a week for her son to stay in a Cuban resort while he awaits a trial. The report also quotes the LeComptes' travel agent as saying he has had two other clients detained in Cuba under similar circumstances -- one for six months, the other for almost a year.
Given the attention this case is getting, however, I predict Cody will be back in Canada before long.

Where Cody LeCompte went wrong

2010-06-19T00:54:00.010-04:00

It seems that detained tourists in Cuba are put up in beach resorts while the island’s wheels of justice grind along like the gearbox in a Russian tractor.
Cody LeCompte, a 19-year-old from Simcoe, Ontario, has been forbidden from leaving the island since an April traffic accident in which the rental Hyundai Accent he was driving (hmmm, sounds familiar) collided with a dump truck. LeCompte and his three passengers were injured, and all spent time in hospital.
Since then, LeCompte has been staying at a resort in Santa Lucia with his uncle. It's not clear who’s paying the bills.
Although the family insists the other driver was at fault, a Cuban court this week apparently decided that LeCompte must stand trial. His mother told reporters she’s heard the trial may not take place for six months to one year.
Canada’s Foreign Affairs department says traffic accidents “are a frequent cause of arrest and detention of Canadians in Cuba” -- although if that’s the case, such incidents haven’t been getting much publicity until now.
In a long-standing advisory on its website, Foreign Affairs notes that accidents resulting in death or injury are treated as crimes, and the onus is on the driver to prove innocence. Not surprisingly, the department suggests Canadians avoid driving in Cuba.
The press coverage hasn’t mentioned one aspect of this case that might explain why Cuba is being especially heavy-handed with young Cody.
He shouldn't have been at the wheel. In Cuba, as in many places, you must be at least 21 to drive a rental car. Some of the island's rental agencies (all government-owned) demand that drivers be at least 25, with three years of experience, or even 30 to take out certain luxury cars.
Certainly the LeComptes wish they had avoided driving in Cuba.
They were en route to Camegüey, a city near the centre of the island, when they were hit broadside.
“The road conditions were horrific. There were potholes everywhere,” LeCompte’s mother told the Toronto Star . “There’s no intersection, no stop sign, no traffic light. Animals were all over the place. We slowed down at all intersections, then came the big dump truck that didn’t brake.”
I still wonder who’s paying for the resort.

(This post revised on July 18, 2010.)

See: My question, answered or click the "newer post" button, below, for several updates on the Lecompte case.

See: 10 Tips for Driving in Cuba.

Elvis in a Gullwing in Havana

2010-06-14T12:25:00.000-04:00

Pieralfonso Longo came across a Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing in Cuba in 1978.
It was the summer Cuba played host to the World Festival of Youth and Students, a left-wing gathering taking place for the first time in the Western Hemisphere. A reported 18,500 young people from 145 countries came to Havana that August to rally for “anti-imperialist solidarity, peace and friendship.”
Longo, an Italian and a photographer of some note, saw the Gullwing parked at a beach area. Its paintwork, an unfortunate shade of mustard yellow, looked original. Standing next to it was a motorcycle policeman. The car's doors were open, and seated on the sill on the driver’s side was a bluejeaned man with dark, slicked back hair.
“ ‘Elvis’ was a sort of police or tourist chief there,” reports Longo, who took a photo of the scene that you can see here.

Everyone's loss

2010-06-10T22:54:00.001-04:00

Recent posts about a certain website’s wide-eyed excitement over the potential value of rare cars in Cuba seem to have struck a nerve. “I don’t feel it is helpful that you disparage our information in an effort to build your blogsite/reputation,” the site’s author responded in a message.
OK, maybe I was a tad harsh. (Though not to enhance my reputation, which, we all will agree, is beyond salvage.)
But here’s the thing. Cuba’s classics – from sturdy Ford sedans to prized European exotics – are a collective treasure. For the enthusiast, the sight of so many pre-1960s cars puffing along in daily use can be as thrilling as a trip up the Amazon to a birdwatcher, a backstage pass to a rock fan.
And even the person who normally cares little about cars cannot help but be moved by the bright colours and bold lines of these vintage vehicles (an expression of post-war confidence, and so different from cars today), and by the message their long service conveys about the depth of conflict between neighbours.
Inevitably, the rift between Cuba and the United States will end. And inevitably, Cuba’s fleet of cacharros will dwindle. Some will survive as tourist taxis; some will be preserved as collectibles, to be shown off at the usual car shows and cruise nights. But no longer will they be seen everyday on every street, in the numbers that so long have made Cuba a place like nowhere else, a place outside of time.
It would be unfair to deny Cubans the chance to replace their weary rides with modern vehicles, or, for some, to finally reap some reward for heirlooms held in the family for generations.
Still, when it happens, we know that something unique and special – for the people of Cuba and for the citizens of other nations who have long looked upon the island with wonder – will be lost. Car enthusiasts, especially, should lament.

Sports car sightings

2010-05-30T23:30:00.001-04:00

Forget, for a moment, Cuba's Maseratis and other eluders. The island has plenty of mainstream sports cars, and these can often be seen in daily use. CARISTAS friend Michael Roy provides shots of two MGAs he's come across in Havana.

The modern, 10-spoke rims on the top car look spiffy -- and check out the wooden wheel and dash on the lower car. More than 100,000 MGAs were produced between 1955 and 1962. Most were built in England, but according to the North American MGA Register, some were sent in "kit" form to other countries, including Cuba, for final assembly.

Meet me on Mercomatic

2010-05-29T00:19:00.000-04:00

Merc-O-Matic was Mercury’s version of the Ford-O-Matic automatic transmission introduced in 1950. “Just accelerate to go, brake to stop,” said the ads. “Furthermore, it's performance proved!”
This Merc-O-Matic equipped Mercury looked at home in the parking lot at Juan Gualberto Gómez Airport, but another suitable spot for it could be the Charlotte Park district of Nashville, Tennessee. Ford Motor Co. built a factory in the neighbourhood near the Cumberland River in the 1950s to produce windshields and other glass, and many of the streets are named for Ford products.
There’s a Marauder Drive and a Comet Drive, and both a Mercomatic Drive and a Mercomatic Court.

Mercury observed

2010-05-27T23:21:00.000-04:00

My father's first car, and the first car I remember riding in, was a 1956 Mercury two-door sedan. Now Ford Motor Co. is reportedly preparing to drop the 71-year-old brand, and another fine car name will be lost.

Except in Cuba.

1957 Mercury Montclair Phaeton four-door hardtop, early model (later Mercurys from the 1957 model year have quad headlamps).

This just in!

2010-05-24T12:12:00.002-04:00

Any day now, watch for Hagerty's Cars That Matter to announce its "discovery" of Cadillacs in Havana.

Cuban Caddies, from top: 1955 with scrollwork grille, probable 1952 (gold emblems mark Cadillac 50th anniversary), 1951 in taxi duty, 1956 Series 62 sedan, 1958 two-door hardtop with non-original grille insert.

Cool cars in Cuba? Who knew?

2010-05-23T12:18:00.000-04:00

Just like Columbus “discovered” lands that already were inhabited, a U.S.-based website, Hagerty’s Cars That Matter, is touting its discovery of a Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing and other exotic cars in Cuba.

“Finally,” says the breathless blog, “there’s something more than rumor and innuendo.”
CARISTAS readers, of course, have known about the Gullwing for many months, and readers of Michael E. Ware’s Automobiles Lost & Found (Haynes Publishing, 2008), will have been aware of it still longer – though not as long as the Cubans who have been the car’s custodians since the 1950s.
Offered on Hagerty’s website are several photos of the rusting Mercedes that are similar to Mr. Ware’s shots published here and in Automobiles Lost & Found. The site also provides pictures of a 300SL roadster, an Arbath Zagato “Double Bubble” coupe and a “Vignale-bodied mystery car” that again were already documented in the book, where the third car is correctly identified as a 1951 Maserati A6 GLS with Frua body.
The website says it was given the photos by “a friend” and reports – somewhat disingenously, one might suspect – that “we do not know if they are still in Cuba, their location in Cuba, if they are for sale, if there are more, or how to get in touch with the owner(s).”
Discover this, Hagarty’s. They aren’t for sale.

See the Hagarty’s report here.

See CARISTAS Gullwing posts:

Discovered in Cuba, a rare Mercedes bird

Our Manna in Havana

Gullwing bits and pieces
Tracking the Gullwing

Oldtimers rule!

2010-05-02T12:24:00.000-04:00

In a cogent analysis of the possibilities for change in Cuba, Archibald R.M. Ritter of the Canadian Foundation For the Americas, an independent think tank, asks:
“Is Cuba at the threshold of a reform process, pushed by economic imperatives and forces from below? Or will it continue to be paralyzed by a gerontocracy obsessed with political control?”
I don’t think he’s talking about the cars.

Still another rare bird

2010-04-30T23:32:00.002-04:00

While we continue to seek the Mercedes-Benz Gullwing and the less exotic, but even more elusive Batista 1956 Chevrolet Corvette, our friends over at Hemmings Blog have been in pursuit of their own Cuban curiosity – a mysterious “skycar” that was demonstrated at the 1959 Havana International Auto Show.
Guess they are the better sleuths, however: in no time flat, they found that the auto-plane combo was an Aerocar, one of six designed and built by Moulton Taylor of Longview, Washington.
An American named Thomas Weitbrecht flew the Aerocar from Key West to Havana, where he showed it off for 10 days in the hope of attracting sales. None resulted, but Raul Castro did pose for a photo at the controls.
Perhaps Raul would like to order some Aerocars today for the citizens of Cuba.
Perhaps not.
Hemmings, by the way, learned about the skycar from Che’s Chevrolet, Fidel’s Oldsmobile, the 2004 work Richard Schweid that we know to be the definitive history of cars in Cuba. For an in-depth review of the book, see here, and for Schweid's interesting relevation about why so few 1960 cars found their way to Cuba from the U.S., see here.

Coco gals

2010-04-24T00:05:00.001-04:00

Tracking the Gullwing

2010-04-07T23:00:00.003-04:00

Rachel Kushner’s Telex from Cuba (Scribner 2008) follows the lives of American sugar plantation managers and their families in Oriente province as Fidel, Raúl and their followers descend from the mountains. This fresh and revealing perspective is just one strength of a novel that captures the texture of Cuban life in the 1950s, from the hierarchy of skin tone to the secret to skinning a pineapple in a spiral. The source of such detail could only have been Kushner’s mother, who grew up in that American community in eastern Cuba.
And in that rich texture, this intriguing thread:
“ ‘The town of Palma Soriano has officially fallen under rebel control, according to Cuban news sources.’ There was television footage of roadblocks and tanks, people cheering in the streets. Then an old Hollywood actor, the star of a film Everly had seen in Nicaro, waving from a silver sports coupe with gull-wing doors. Cubans flowed around and past the exotic car as if he and it didn’t matter ... ”
A real event? We don’t know the name of the actor. But we recognize the car.

Renting a car in Cuba: You won't drive a bargain

2010-04-03T20:51:00.001-04:00

Rex is reportedly Cuba's most expensive agency, but with a fleet ranging from the Seat Córdoba (a Spanish-built Volkswagen) as budget choice to the Audi A6 (right) as luxury ride, it has the best cars. Havanautos also specializes in high-end vehicles. Micar or Panautos could be the cheapest agencies, if you can connect with them. But remember, all are state-controlled, so don’t expect any price wars.
I’ve dealt only with Cubacar, a mainstream agency with a selection running from the little Hyundai Atos to the Hyundai Sonata and Peugeot 307 CC. My choice, a Hyundai Accent sedan, fell into Category E – medium-sized with air conditioning.
This year, my three-day rental – the minimum period for most bookings made from outside Cuba – came to a total of $383.45 Cdn. That includes $279.55 paid to the Canadian booking agency when I made the reservation, and $103.90 collected by Cubacar when I picked up the car. That last sum covered the mandatory 15 CUC daily insurance fee and a full tank of gas (48.40 CUC), which I include in the total because there is no credit for any gas in the tank when you return a car – and in Cuba, you’re wise to never let the level drop too low.
As well, I handed over my credit card for a $200 damage deposit (that pricey insurance has a deductible), but the credit slip was returned for me to tear up when I brought the Accent back in one piece. Fortunately, there was no limit on how many kilometres I could put on it. Nor did I have to pay the 5 CUC–per-day charge for automatic transmission that I see listed on some websites, or – since C. had no intention of getting behind the wheel – the 10 CUC daily fee to list an additional driver on the contract.
Still, not cheap. Wonder how much more I’d have to pay for the Audi?

Renting a car in Cuba: So many, so few

2010-03-24T20:47:00.000-04:00

Type in “Cuba car rental” and your search engine will respond with thousands of sites. The reality, however, is that Cuba has just a handful of rental agencies – Transtur/Cubacar, Rex, Havanautos and the smaller Via, Micar and Panautos – and connecting directly with any of them from outside can be difficult.
So who operates those myriad sites? Travel firms and other companies that serve as commission-paid intermediaries. Some are open about their middleman status, but others masquerade as the actual Cuban agencies, which is how I found myself dealing with a French company and watching my Canadian dollars get converted first to U.S. currency and then to Euros (with fees both times, I believe). My credit company called to ask why my card number was suddenly popping up in Europe, and the French travel firm even demanded that I fax copies of the forms it sent me to the rental headquarters in Cuba. Guess it wanted to avoid long-distance charges.
This year I got smart and booked through Sun Travel, an agency in my own country. The process was quick and straightforward and done largely by e-mail. I did have to fax a signed payment form, but only to Sun Travel in Toronto. It e-mailed me a voucher to print and present in Cuba. When I reached the Cubacar office, my Hyundai Accent was ready for me.
Next instalment: What it cost (I know, I promised that last time).

Renting a car in Cuba: Keep the lead out

2010-03-19T19:52:00.000-04:00

I guess if I reserve through the same agency, for pickup at the same rental office, I shouldn’t be surprised to get the same car. So there awaiting me was my old friend the Accent, still with some shine to its wedding dress-white paint, but bearing an extra year of scuffs, and a trunk badge that read H UNDAI – the missing letter no doubt a trophy for some Generation Y’er.
Three years ago, this car was nearly new. Now, 65,000 Cuban rental kilometres later, its springs had some extra bounce, yet the ride, overall, remained reasonably smooth.
The engine, unfortunately, hadn’t fared as well. It felt and sounded coarse, with less power than I remembered. One afternoon in Havana, it seemed so fuel-starved, I wondered if I would be joining the roadside legion of hitchhikers. Despite this, fuel consumption was up.
My guess? By accident or intent, it’s had a few tankfuls of “regular” gas, instead of the pricier “special gasoline” (1.10 CUC a litre on my visit) mandated for rental cars. Cuba’s regular gas contains lead – fine for the Blue Flame Six in a ’54 Chevy; not so fine for the sensors, catalytic converter and other innards of a modern car.
I had two flat tires, both slow leaks. The first was from a ripped sidewall; the clerk at the agency office put on a new tire. Then, as I returned the car at the end of the rental, I noticed a different tire going flat. Lucky timing. Always check your spare.
Next instalment: How to book; how much you’ll pay.

Ka-lunk!

2010-03-14T13:14:00.001-04:00

The car in the new Caristas logo is a 1960 Buick -- a delightful two-door hardtop. It could be a Le Sabre, an Invicta or even an Electra; there was no way for us to tell in the moments that we drove alongside it on the Via Blanca. No matter what model, it would have had that year's new "Mirrormagic" instrument cluster that allows the gauges to be viewed in a mirror that tilts to suit the driver's eye level. As we crossed a bridge we heard a “ca-chunk” and C., who was taking these photos, said: “I think something just fell off it.”

Redesigned, to serve you better!

2010-03-10T19:00:00.000-05:00

Caristas, you may have noticed, has a new look. It's the result of many hours of study and debate by the Caristas design team -- all with a goal of making this site more attractive and accessible for you, the reader. Well, it's actually the result of me fooling around with different website templates without remembering to first save the settings for the old design. But I do hope you like the new look, because there's no going back.

Two seats, three wheels, four gear ratios (even in reverse)

2010-03-07T23:13:00.002-05:00

Isettas aren’t the only microcars still doing their micro thing in Cuba. Here’s a Messerschmitt three-wheeler I saw passing the Plaza de la Revolución. The tandem-seat Messerschmitt was built from 1953 through 1964 at a factory of the famous German aircraft manufacturer. This one looks like a post-1957 KR201 roadster model, though it might be an earlier (hard canopy) KR200 that’s been converted. A couple of neat things about the Messerschmitt: Its single-cylinder two-stroke engine came equipped with a second set of breaker points, allowing it to run backwards to reverse the little car. And because of that design, all four transmission gear ratios can be engaged when backing up!

This thing is not a Thing

2010-03-07T00:08:00.001-05:00

Spent a noon hour recently at the Plaza de la Revolución, waiting for my reseacher card to be approved at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí across the street. While other visitors took pictures of the square’s famous ironwork profile of Che Guevara and the newly added image of Camilo Cienfuegos, I aimed my camera outward, at the traffic buzzing by on the boulevards surrounding the plaza.
Among my more interesting sightings was this little machine. For a moment I thought it was a Volkswagen Type 181 Kurierwagen, the military-style utility vehicle that was sold in North America as the Thing. But a closer look told me this was smaller and more detailed than the plain-sided Thing. (Interesting: A Thing appears in the background of a scene in The World’s Fastest Indian, which is based on events years before the Thing’s 1969 introduction. Given its mid-century looks, however, we can forgive the movie people for the anachronism.)
So what is this? A Soviet dune buggy-Jeep cross? Whatever. I like it.
And OK, I did take a touristy photo, too.

The Lord is My Fuel Gauge

2010-02-20T16:36:00.000-05:00

Two more Havana images from Michael Roy. The truck is a mid-1930s Chevrolet.

Making Time Through Matanzas

2010-02-08T14:09:00.001-05:00