CARISTAS

Say, Che, what IS that purple car?    "Runs like a sewing machine" is a phrase you don't come across often now, but once was common in the car world. It's a compliment, meaning that an engine is smooth and reliable ... though maybe a bit buzzy.    Owners of Singer cars no doubt heard it regularly, although when directed at their vehicles, it was probably intended more as a gentle jibe. And they, no doubt, responded that Singer Motors Ltd. , founded by George Singer as a bicycle manufacturer in Coventry, England, in 1874, had nothing to do with the sewing machine company Isaac Merritt Singer and partner Edward Clark launched in New York in 1851.    Singer – George, that is – first built motorized three-wheelers in 1901. A four-wheeler followed in 1905, and in 1912, the company achieved significant success with its Singer Ten, a sturdy two-seat roadster that was good on gas.    Singer Motors was quick to adopt mechanical innovations, from s...

Salvage efforts at the crash scene: photo source unknown.    When did the airplane first become the tool of terrorists? Some put the date as early as Feb. 21, 1931, when armed Peruvian revolutionaries attempted to force the pilot of a Ford Tri-Motor to carry them aloft to drop leaflets. But the pilot refused and the flight never took place, so it's hard to assign great significance to this event.    Others could point out that warring nations have long employed aircraft to instill fear in civilian populations. Certainly the airborne destruction of Rotterdam ordered by Hermann Göring in 1940, to cite a single example, could be nothing but terrorism.    Jangir Arasly, in a paper for the Partnership for Peace Consortium, suggests the era of "modern aviation terrorism" began as late as 1968 with the hijacking of an El Al jet by gunmen seeking to spotlight the Palestinian cause.    But to Cuban-born historian Manuel Márquez-Sterling, it was the ...

   FULGENCIO BATISTA seemed relaxed, even carefree, as he posed in his son's sports car for the August 1957 photograph that appears in the previous entry here.    But the watchful presence of his bodyguards – you can see their sunglasses glinting from the cars arrayed behind the Batista Corvette – tells a different story. Batista knew that threats could come from any direction, at any time. Across Cuba and across the political spectrum were opponents dedicated to his removal – some by any means.    Just five months before, the dictator had barely escaped a student-led attack on the presidential palace in Havana. Gunfire echoed in the streets for two hours, and when it ended 42 people were dead.    In the Sierra Maestra Mountains to the east, Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement was gaining power by the day.    And looming behind Batista in that photograph was an aircraft that would become an instrument of his enemies and open a ne...

From the collection of the Biblioteca Nacional José Marti.     A WHILE back, I challenged readers to name the cars lined up behind the 1956 Chevrolet Corvette occupied by Fulgencio Batista and his son Rubén in this August 1957 photo.    Rashly, I did this before identifying the makes and models myself. And when I sat down to do this, I found myself stymied by the second car from the left. It's clearly recognizable as a late-1950s General Motors product, but while the hood badge looks vaguely like a Chevrolet crest, its grille seems more Oldsmobile or Buick.    A closer look, however, revealed that the emblem, though obscured by the sun's reflection, is indeed the ringed-globe badge that adorned Oldsmobiles through much of the 1950s. That and the grille shape make this a 1957 Olds, though it is impossible from this angle to know whether it's a Super 88 or the longer-wheelbase 98. Its two-tone paint doesn't narrow it down, since that was available acr...

  DAVID SOUL  has had success as pop singer and stage actor. But it's as police detective Kenneth Hutchinson in the cheesy 1970s television drama Starsky and Hutch that he will forever be best known.    Cheesy 1970s television? OK, redundant. Yet even for that era, Starsky and Hutch was especially ripe fromage.    Each episode, Hutch and partner David Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) would skid and slide through the streets of the California town of "Bay City" in a jacked-up 1974 Ford Gran Torino, tomato red with great white side slashes (or sometimes a '75 or '76 Gran Torino – the show went through a lot of cars).    Often they seemed to just slither about at random. But really they were hunting down crooks who apparently were unaware that the flashiest vehicle in three states was occupied by a pair of undercover cops.    Guess those crooks weren't getting the word on the street. Unlike Messrs. S. and H., plugged in to all goings...

All photos courtesy of Miguel Llorente, This European Life.     Miguel Llorente, as already noted here, has determined that least one of Cuba's rumoured Gullwings is metal, not myth.    But not a lot of metal, it turns out.    In the years-old photos that helped spur his search, a Mercedes-Benz 300SL, engine-less, rust creeping up its sides, lies beached amidst debris in a yard said to be in or near Havana.    In the photos Miguel took of that very car last month, in or near Havana, the rust has spread everywhere: door sills, window frames, the roof. Worse, the car bends up at either end, its trademark doors jammed open. Because it was transported and stored poorly, Miguel writes at This European Life , "it's almost broken in half."    Too little remains for it to be revived. This "fractured carcass," as our writer calls it, might at best provide a serial number and a few scraps to allow some monied collector to turn a Gullwing r...

The 300SL years ago. What does it look like now? Photo: Michael E. Ware    IN THE BRAVE  tradition of Spanish adventurers, Miguel Llorente decided to set course for the New World.    Already, he has conquered America, and now, at the helm of a 30-year-old Mercedes-Benz 300 TD station wagon bearing Kansas licence plates – Miguel apparently being the first Spanish explorer to settle in Wichita – he`s pressing south to Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala and beyond. His ultimate destination: Tierra del Fuega, at the tip of South America.    But unlike his forebears, Miguel Llorente`s quest is not gold, or a passage to the Pacific, or even the Fountain of Youth (unlikely to be a priority for a man who appears to be younger than his car). Instead, this explorer seeks scenes he can photograph and experiences he can write about. And because of his keen curiosity, he`s never short of subjects.    Miguel has, however, at least one additional goal. He want...