CARISTAS

Nader/ U.S. Library of Congress    Ralph Nader had already made auto safety his cause in 1959, but his visit to Cuba in April that year was prompted by Castro, not cars. He wanted to get a close look at the revolutionary whose seizure of power in Cuba had captured the world's attention.    Nader succeeded, taking in a press conference and, despite his lack of media credentials, even managing to direct some questions at the Cuban president.    On his return to the U.S. Nader co-authored a report for the Harvard Law Record, an independent, student-edited newspaper, that today reads largely as an apology for the rush trials and executions that followed Castro's takeover.    He travelled to Cuba at least twice more, dining with Fidel Castro at the Palace of the Revolution in 2002, where he might have discussed with the Cuban leader his own presidential aspirations, and then returning six years later to again criticize the U.S. trade embarg...

Wikipedia         SO WHY , after writing here about visitors detained after traffic accidents, and being fully aware of our own government's advisory against driving in Cuba, would we rent a Kia Picanto from Cubacar?    Well, we wanted to get somewhere. Couple of places, in fact. But we weren't quite sure where we were going or how long we wanted to stay. So hiring a car and driver, our habit in the last few trips, wasn't as practical this time.    It went fine. Our travels took us to the Varadero resort strip, home of some of the calmest roads in Cuba, and then on to Cárdenas, a city where the biggest obstacle is the horse-drawn carriages rolling along the straight streets.    We didn't speed (good thing, considering all the radar traps we saw) and we tried to take special care at intersections.    One thing I had forgotten. While much of the world uses red octagon stop signs, Cuba employs the red, downward-facing tri...

Update:   The Canadian government and the Cuban embassy in Ottawa announced Thursday that Justine Davis will be allowed to leave Cuba and is expected to arrive in Canada on Friday. Justine Davis, son Cameron in Cuba .  Justine Davis is the latest visitor detained in Cuba while police investigate the circumstanc es of a fatal road accident. Like all who have been in her situation, she wants to go home.   But there is a compelling reason for her desire to return to Toronto.   This weekend is the funeral of Davis's three-year-old son, Cameron, who was killed in late December when a scooter operated by his mother collided with a truck on Cayo Largo, a resort island on Cuba's south coast. Davis wants to be at her son's funeral in Canada.    Cuba, we know, has been rigid in forcing foreigners to remain in the Caribbean nation until its often lengthy investigations are complete. Damian Buksa, 34, of Mississauga, was detained for months after a July ...

As a 1960 model, Chevrolet Corvair would have been among the last direct U.S. exports .    By the time Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed came out in 1965, the suspension of the Chevrolet Corvair had been redesigned. But this first-year '60 Corvair has presumably been riding for five-plus decades on the infamous rear swing-axles that made the early Corvair's handling so unpredictable and earned Chevy's economy car a full chapter in Nader's book.    Fortunately for its driver – who looks a bit like the young firebrand Ralph, dontcha think? – this Havana Corvair appears quite safe at rest. Good Corvair article here: www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-1960-1963chevrolet-corvair-gms-deadliest-sin/

Dating from mid-1970s, Peugeot 404 is being prepared for more years of service.     A fter leaving the shop where Alonso's Chevrolet is being worked on, we stop by another garage a little farther along the country road. Here, a young man is busy renewing the floor of a Peugeot 404 that would have come to Cuba from Argentina, as the badge on its decklid attests.    This fellow, Alonso tells me, is a student of the man restoring his `56 Bel Air. From the high-quality work we see on the Peugeot, it`s clear that the master`s magic is brushing off.    When I was a teenager, a friend`s family owned a pair of Peugeots like this. The 404 was the French automaker's largest model upon its 1960 introduction, but by North American standards it was a compact, and those two little round-fendered 404s were an odd contrast to the blocky Detroit products occupying most driveways at the time.    I've since, however, come to quite admire the 404's bala...

From the ground up: Floor of '56 Chevrolet has been patched and primed.    There is no mystery to the longevity of the Cuban car.    Not when Alonso's 1956 Chevrolet is laid bare for you to witness the toll of nearly six decades of motion and sun heat and most of all corrosion. The Cuban car will never be immersed in the ice and brine of a northern winter, but still it must live amidst the salty ocean winds and sweating humidity that ensure the inevitability of rust. Before: Bel Air was soft around the edges.    Stripped to its metal skeleton, the Bel Air sedan shows this corrosion even in the curl of roof above the doors and in the channel that holds the glass of the windshield. The mechanic/bodyman charged with reviving Alonso's car has already patched and primed the trunk and cabin floors and now is grinding away the upper rust and brazing in new metal to replace what has been lost.    The decay runs far deeper than you suspected ...

Feigning sleep, carefully trained dog is ready to pounce on intruders.    My chum Ralphee of CUBANCLASSICS once speculated that a clandestine Chevy workshop must exist near Matanzas, given the number of fine 1950s Chevrolets we've noticed in and around the port city east of Havana.    It made me imagine some enormous garage, perhaps burrowed underground to elude the spy satellites, where Cuba's most skilled craftsmen shape good-as-new parts for Bel Airs and 210s and Nomads from metals scavenged from decommissioned MiG-21s.    Too wonderful to be true, I thought.    Yet today I can report there is a secret Chevy workshop. I have seen it. I took photos.    I was brought to this place by a man we'll call Alonso, owner of a black-over-white 1956 Bel Air sedan that was purchased new by his grandfather, a farmer near, yes, Matanzas.    Alonso's Bel Air looked good from a distance, less good up close. But now, he told me...