Famous Chevy
Alvarez began by parking his car outside the Hotel Nacional and offering his services as a taxi driver, but now he has taken the nostalgia craze to a whole new level.
Today, he and his wife Nidialys Acosta oversee a fleet of 22 classic private cars and drivers that form a loose association called NostalgiCar. Alvarez also has started an off-shoot called Garaje NostalgiCar, a garage that refurbishes vintage cars and employs eight workers. He calls the garage, which has refurbished his own cars and those of others, his Plan B.
The couple owns two of the fleet cars, a 1955 blue Chevy Bel Air and a 1956 pink-and-white Bel Air called Lola that could possibly be the most photographed classic car in Cuba. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sat behind Lola’s pink steering wheel during anApril business mission to Cuba as the cameras whirred.
When Alvarez lifted Lola’shoodtoshowthegovernor the old engine had died and been replaced by a four-cylinder Toyota diesel engine, Cuomosaid seeing a Chevy with a Toyota engine was a first for him.
Lola is a looker with whitewall tires and pink rims, pink and white plasticupholstery and even lipstick-pink car locks. But another silver-gray 1956 Bel Air in the fleet has its original engineanda big-cat purr that makes Lola seem like a kitten.
Alvarez says he’s constantly in touch with the government about possibly turning NostalgiCar into a cooperative. Many formerly state-run beauty salons, barbershopsandother service companies have been turnedover to theirworkers who run them independently on a profit-and-loss basis as the government seeks to pare state payrolls.
But so far he hasn’t had a positive response, so each driver/owner is an individual cuentapropista. “Today we’re not a company or a cooperative,” Alvarez said. “There’s not the legal framework to do what we want.” But he’s content to leave the structure of the garage as it is because he said he doesn’t think the employees are prepared to become his partners, and so far all the investment has been his capital.
Most of the otherNostalgiCar ownersreinvest about 70 percent of what they earn into their automobiles, and with the remaining 30 percent, “they live better than any state worker,” said Alvarez.
Alvarez, who studied mechanical engineering, first joined forces with five friendswho also had classic AugustoMaxwellMiami attorney
cars. NostalgiCar grew quickly from five classic cars to 11 to 22.
But Alvarez said his dream is to have a company that provides services with a fleet of cars that he has refurbished and owns and that has drivers that he employs.
Even thoughAlvarez and his wife get no commissions fromthe other drivers inthe NostalgiCar group, he said working collectively helps them get volume and name recognition.
Then there’s the problem of getting the parts needed to bring the cars back to their glory days.
Parts are hard to get in Cuba, so Alvarez often turns toDanchukManufacturing, a Santa Ana, Calif., company that makes 1955-1957 Chevrolet replacement parts, MAC’s Antique Auto Parts in Lockport, N.Y. and even eBay.
Like so many things in Cuba, there is a Miami connection. Because he hasn’t been able to buy direct, Alvarez works with a Miami middleman who purchases the parts that the garage needs with his credit card for a 20 percent surcharge and then arranges their delivery to Cuba through a Miami shipping company. He said it often costs $8 to $10 per pound to send the parts to Cuba. Then duties must be paid on the Cuba side.
That means a partwith a factory value of $159 might end up costing him as much as $250, Alvarez said.
Under the newU.S. regulations, Alvarez and other private Cuban entrepreneurs like him may eventually be able to import the parts directly, said Miami attorneyAugustoMaxwell.
“Theoretically any American business should be allowed to export to a private Cuban business person, but most U.S. companies aren’t familiar with how to do it,” he said. “It’s interesting to see the forces of private enterprise begin to work in Cuba and it will be interesting to see how theymanage it.”
NostalgiCar has a preference for Chevys, but the fleet also includes some Fords and othermakes.
Old junkers, which cost $6,000 to $7,000, come into the garage and after a year or so, they emerge as “very pretty” machines, Alvarez said.
The big missing ingredient for Cuba’s self-employed workforce, which now numbers nearly 500,000, is the lack of a meaningful wholesale market on the island. “If we can’t figure out how to get access to a wholesale market, I don’t think we’ll grow much larger,” Alvarez said.