Classic Cuban car fleet ready for upgrade
HAVANA — Any shortlist of what Cuba is most famous for would include Fidel Castro, cigars, baseball and the 60,000 vintage American cars imported before the Cuban Revolution and still on the road today.
The 1952 Chevrolet may be the most popular car in Cuba. But that relic has lots of lovingly maintained competition from the same postwar era. Buick Roadmasters, Cadillac Eldorados with their mammoth tail fins, sleek Plymouth Furys, two-toned pastel Studebakers and even Ford’s notorious Edsel are the most visible legacies of the severe U.S. trade embargo that was imposed by Washington in 1960 under statutes including the Trading with the Enemy Act.
It can cost tourists about $30 an hour to ride around in one of the fancier American convertibles. A Cuban friend arranged a more authentic experience, finding a driver willing to drive me all day for $70 in a 62-year-old Chevy taxi he had bought a few years back for a couple of thousand dollars.
Yuniel, who posed for photos with his car but was reluctant to give his full name, reckoned that his jalopy had been refreshed about a dozen times over the years with thick coats of black house paint. The car’s odometer stopped working ages ago. Only one windshield wiper worked. The upholstery was lumpy and the leather and plastic covering was probably already thin when Richard Nixon won the White House for the first time. But the car handled just fine.
During the week, Yuniel usually drives about 400 kilometres during his 12hour shifts. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of American cars built during the design heyday of Detroit’s golden era, he rhymed off vehicle names as the parade of magnificent beauties went by as we drove past the baroque ruins of Old Havana and through the sprawling, ramshackle suburbs where most of the capital’s two million residents live.
As thrilling as Cuba is for car buffs searching for old models such as a Dodge Coronet or DeSoto Firedome, these time-worn automobiles are a potent symbol of how long the Cuban economy has been frozen in time and how much catching up there is to do if Washington and Havana make good on the dramatic promise they made to re-establish diplomatic ties and lift the severe trade sanctions that have crippled Cuba for so long.
Those landmark changes will not mean much if Cuba does not drastically change the way it allows foreigners to do business. As longtime Cuban correspondent Marc Frank reported in the Financial Times recently, the Canadians and Europeans who have been allowed to do business here have not had an easy time of it. As well as recounting a litany of sad stories about government interference, Frank noted that about 60 per cent of the businesses started by foreigners in Cuba over the past 25 years have failed.
Cuba’s Marxist-Leninist bureaucracy is slow, inflexible and often corrupt. Standing with and behind the bureaucrats are security agencies and courts that have remained deeply suspicious of outsiders and especially of capitalists. For example, police still interrogate and often detain Cubans if they see them speaking to visitors without official sanction.
Still, there is a groundswell of optimism among many Cubans that another revolution as profound as the one that brought Castro to power is surely coming and coming soon.
“Everybody is waiting to see what the first step will be,” said one of Yuniel’s friends, whose father had served as one of Castro’s generals.
“The momentum that has been created now is impossible to stop.”
Another man, who spent 19 months in prison for refusing to fight for Cuba in Angola, said: “After 56 years of terror and being scared of our own government we have so much hope riding on this. Communism has been a catastrophe for us. But honestly, very big changes are in prospect and nobody knows how this will play out.”
Drivers such as Yuniel and others insisted that there is a huge pent-up desire to buy new Fords and Chevrolets and other vehicles that would allow them to finally retire their treasured old cars. But as most Cubans earn less than $300 a year it is hard to see how there will be much of a market.
Cuban authorities allowed a small number of European and Asian cars to be imported last year. But once import duties and other taxes were factored in, a Volkswagen ended up costing more than double what it would anywhere else, so there have been few takers.
If they get the chance, collectors from the U.S. will snap up hundreds, if not thousands, of Cuba’s venerable American cars. But Cuba’s stubborn bureaucracy and its feeble economy make it likely that Yuniel’s trusty Chevy and lots of similar antiques will continue wheeling around Cuba for years to come.