Motorcycle sidecars thriving in Cuba
HAVANA — Cuba’s love affair with 1950s-era cars from the United States is still intact, but the island nation also has a lingering attachment to a workhorse of Soviet leftovers, the motorcycle sidecar.
Ranging from rusting relics to the pampered and the pristine, hundreds of old motorcycle sidecars rattle through the streets of Havana.
The retro appeal gets a lot of attention from tourists “but here it’s common, normal”, says Enrique Oropesa Valdez.
Valdez should know. The 59-year old makes a living as an instructor teaching people how to handle the sidecar in Havana’s traffic, where riders seem able to squeeze the machines through the narrowest of gaps.
And they’ve built up an intense loyalty among the mend-andmake-do Cubans.
“They’re very practical,” according to Alejandro Prohenza Hernandez, a restaurateur who says his coddled red 30-year-old Jawa 350 is like a second child.
Cheaper and more practical than the gas-guzzling, shark-finned US behemoths, the bikes are used for everything from the family runabout to trucking goods and workers’ materials.
“A lot of foreigners really like to take photos of it,” says Hernandez. “I don’t know, I think they see it as something from another time.”
Cuba lags several decades behind the rest of the world due to a crippling US embargo, so the makers’ badges on the ubiquitous sidecars speak of the past.
Names like Jawa date from the former Czechoslovakia and MZ from the former East Germany, while Urals, Dniepers and Jupiters originated in Russia.
Havana’s military acquired the sidecars from Moscow at the height of the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s, for use by state factories and farms. Over the years, they gradually filtered down to the general public.
That’s how Jose Antonio Ceoane Nunez, 46, found his bright red Jupiter 3.
“When the Cuban government bought sidecars from Russians in 1981, it was for state-owned companies,” he said.
Later, the companies “sold them on to the most deserving employees”, he said. His father, who worked for a state body, passed the bike on to him.
“Even if the sidecar gets old. I’ll never sell it because it’s what I use to move around. It’s my means of transport in Cuba, and there aren’t many other options,” said Nunez.
Valdez himself has a cherished green 1977 Ural.
“I like it a lot — first, because it’s the means of transport for my family and second, because it’s a source of income.”
And it costs less than a car, still out of reach of most Cubans.
Settled on the island with his Cuban wife, 38-year-old Frenchman Philippe Ruiz didn’t realize at first how ubiquitous the motorcycle sidecar was.
“When I began to be interested, I suddenly realized that I was seeing 50 to 100 a day!”
Renovating a house at the time, he saw that many sidecars were being used to transport building equipment.
Through an internet ad, he bought a blue 1979 Ural a few months ago for $7,400.
“It’s a year older than me and in worse shape,” he said. Soon he had to strip the bike down and “start repairing everything”.
With few spare parts available in Cuba, “people have to bring them in from abroad”, which slows down repairs.
But he has no regrets. An experienced motorcyclist, he’s discovered a whole new side to his passion by riding the Russian machine.