Here's a little feature on the cars of Cuba. Really fascinating vehicles, kept on the road for over half a century now by hook or by crook. Some look a bit worse for the effort but hey, they're still running and driving. This story is essentially a gateway intro to a 15,000 photo archive. LINK: The Cars of Cuba | Mac's Motor City Garage.com
my all time favourite Cuba Car story. I wanted to sponsor these guys into Canada. We should be celebrating ingenuity like this. Not penalizing it. Apparently these guys were running this car as a taxi during the day and converting it to a boat at night. Back to work as a cab every morning. http://www.zmail4u.com/buickboat.htm
Back up to the top with this one - C'mon there's got to be loads of pics from cuba kicking around here....
heres something I was looking at a couple of weeks ago, I also saw a long time ago a popular mechanics article on the cars of cuba...its amazing the ingenuity, the love and imagination someone has in order to keep these cars alive down in cuba. My family is cuban, came to the US in the 1950's right before the revolution and political fuck up. I was always told and shown pictures of the cars they had in cuba in the 50s and what they owned in the US...My grandfather was a mechanic in cuba in the 50's and had a beautiful indian motorcycle at the time... never really been there myself...just out of respect to my family...might be a little hard to understand and explain but ill just leave it at that. but its always nice to see that interest in the car culture in cuba is still remembered and acknowledged here... Heres another cool video... Part 1 <iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3NQO9mOIYu8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Part 2 <iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WfFExC9S3rU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Thanks for all the response. To me this stuff is very close to the original spirit and ethos of hot rodding.
No, he was trying to escape Cuba! Notice the US Coast Guard cutter in the background??? After they got the refugees out out of the car, the USCG blew the car-boat out of the water. Do you really think that Cuban authorities would allow someone to build a boat like this? He did it in secret, and left when the opportunity presented itself.
In another thread here about "rods in odd places" there were some references to cars in Cuba. I posted some photos I found as well as this info:
great video thanks, when i was there i did see a few cars that had nice small blocks, maybe to much billet aluminum but still really nice cars, in the video they show all the plastic bags with new parts in them, i wonder how many of those parts were made in China, China is one country that does alot of trade with them, last time i took a hockey bag full of kids toys and medicine, next time i'm going to take car parts, they did a good job in the video of not showing all the new cars there, and the roads had one brand new KW dump truck after another along with some beauty Mercedes, i'm lucky i have a female friend who has a boyfriend there and she brings me back a few Cohiba cigars every now and then, she's there right now,
I know exactly what the story was. That's why they were building it at night, but it was their only means of income during the day as a taxi. That thing, along with the 50 chev P/U they sailed a few years earlier should be in the Henry Ford Museum. Not ripped to shreds at the bottom of the ocean.
I heard that the guy made it to south america, and slipped over the Mexican border into the U.S. Anyone who can figure out how to drive from Cuba to America, can surely find a way to support themselves and their family.
. There is some interesting information here on Ernest Hemingway’s long-lost 1955 Chrysler New Yorker convertible in Cuba. It was found and David Soul (yes, of Starsky & Hutch fame) has been assisting in the sourcing of parts for the restoration and there is a video at the link below of him discussing and showing the car. Unfortunately the car has suffered serious neglect but it looks like there is quite an effort to resurrect it. Cuban Soul .
Cuba looks like a great place to visit. What more is there to life than old cars and cigars? I reckon it would make an excellent full colour glossy "coffee table" book, with a title like "the cars of Cuba" and maybe a few stories of the folks who keep them running. Has it ever been done before? I'd buy a copy!
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