Cuba - Classic Cars

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Cuban culture today is the widespread maintenance and every-day use of classic American cars. Most of them date from 1949 or the 1950's.We found dozens if not hundreds in the streets of every town and village we visited. There must be thousands in Havana. Many are used as taxis. Most Cubans cannot ever afford to purchase cars. The Russian and Eastern Block cars imported before 1989 were never reliable and have fallen apart. Cuba does not manufacture its own cars. (In fact, automobile traffic is very light everywhere. There simply are not very many cars.) The result is that the American cars that were present before the 1959 Revolution have been maintained, repaired, coddled, and utilized ever since.

This posting is dedicated solely to the classic cars we saw as we moved from town to town on our Road Scholar trip.

Here are a few street scenes.

The first scene that struck me after we landed in Santiago de Cuba and exited the airport was the assortment of classic cars in the taxi stand and airport parking areas.

On our third day, we visited the town of Guantanamo in Eastern Cuba. Here we began the game of being the first in our group to be able to tell what model and year each classic car came from!

In Camaguey, as we walked to the sculptor's studio, I  focused on these two Fords, side-by-side. Can you join our game and tell what year they were first manufactured?

In Sancti Spiritu, this car was proudly parked in the main square. It was hard to miss. Can you name the make? the model? the year?

In Cienfuegos, our more knowledgeable enthusiasts said that you could tell the year of this car by the "dual-bullet" grill above the bumper.

Havana was a bonanza for car enthusiasts, and especially for those of us who spent their youth in some of these models.

This final photo does not really belong here with the classic American cars. It was an old truck in a small town outside Havana. But it serves as an effective contrast to the beautiful cars - which are probably older. I like this photo and present it as my final image here in my final post from Cuba.