Old cars rule Venezuela roads
Financial calamity strangled country’s auto industry; now people cling to aging vehicles
CARACAS, Venezuela — A 1983 Chevrolet C-10 pickup is the workhorse of Argenis Ron’s party equipment rental business. He uses it to haul chairs, tents and tables to gatherings all across Venezuela’s sprawling capital.
The once-white paint is slightly yellowish and the body shows a bit of rust, a few dings. The odometer was already broken when he bought it 12 years ago.
And with business picking up as the pandemic seems to slow, he’s putting in more miles — and making more trips to mechanics, including a recent visit to investigate a snoring-like noise from the left rear wheel.
“When the mechanics ask for parts — the truck asks you — you have to buy them,” Ron said. “One cannot refuse because the truck is a resource to make money.”
He’s philosophical about the need to keep repairing his vintage truck: “It’s not like the current cars that have a computer and have a lot of things at the system level. I say that (old trucks) are trustworthy and more reliable because they use nothing but gasoline and water.”
People like Ron are keeping Caracas’ street-corner mechanics increasingly busy these days as they try to coax a little more life out of aging vehicles in a country whose new car market collapsed and where few can afford to trade up for a better used one.
Venezuela’s vehicle industry produced only eight trucks last year — and not a single car — according to the Chamber of Venezuelan Manufacturers of Automotive Products. At this century’s peak, in 2006-2007, some 172,000 vehicles rolled out of plants operated by Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Chrysler and others.
Imports haven’t filled the gap. In 2021, only 1,886 new light vehicles were sold in Venezuela, according to estimates from LMC Automotive, an auto industry consulting firm. That was about double the number in 2020, but less than 1% of what was sold in 2007, when new light-vehicle sales peaked at 437,675.
Venezuela lifted a ban on importing used cars in 2019. But years of hyperinflation obliterated much of the middle class that once dreamed at least of a used car, leaving average monthly salaries at less than $100. That inflation, combined with government controls meant to stifle it, also meant banks were unwilling or unable to make car loans. So people cling to what they have.
As a result, Venezuela’s roads are full of high-mileage, money-sucking vehicles, many predating the socialist transformation ushered in by the late President Hugo Chavez at the turn of the century.
A complex social, economic and humanitarian crisis began in the mid-2010s, aggravated by falling oil prices, U.S. economic sanctions and — critics allege — flamboyant mismanagement of the economy.
In 2020, about 9 in 10 families once ranked as middle class had fallen into the ranks of the poor, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. By one measure, the monthly income of those households fell from the equivalent of $830 a month in 2012 to $195 in 2020.
Many of the spacious dealerships that once catered to them still bear their logos, but now sit empty or house other businesses. Those open in the capital tend to target the upper class. A Ferrari dealership has three red cars on the floor, each costing more than $400,000.