Business built on drive, ingenuity

Cuban entrepreneur finds success ferrying tourists around in classic American cars

HAVANA— Julio Alvarez Torres started business with a single refurbished 1955 Chevy Bel Air that had been in his family for decades and put it into service in 2010 driving tourists around the city.

They liked the feeling of going back in time, and Alvarez and other cuenta propistas — self-employed entrepreneurs — liked the fact that the pointy fins, heavy chrome and streamlined hood ornaments of 1950s cars could be put to work to earn them a living.

After the 1959 revolution, Cuba became something of a car museum: The trade embargo made it impossible to import the big American automobiles Cub ans loved, and economic problems made it difficult to bring in much of anything except Russianmade Ladas and small Fiats. Now other makes of new imported cars are making their way to the island, but they’re extremely expensive.

With Russian engines, homemade parts and sheer ingenuity, somehow they kept old American cars chugging through city streets. Others carefully guarded their American cars in garages and only took them out for weekly or even more infrequent spins.

Cuba has allowed limited self-employment since the early 1990s but in 2010 when the government began emphasizing self-employment as a way to reduce bloated state payrolls, the old cars became a hot commodity.

Now lines of big-finned beauties, 1950s convertibles and two-tone-models buffed to a gleaming shine wait outside the Hotel Nacional and other Havana tourist hotels to take visitors for spins along the Malecon, pick them up or drop them at the airport or ferry them to attractions and business appointments.