It is difficult to imagine Cuba or Havana without conjuring up images of classic cars. The cars are synonymous with the Caribbean island and a major part of the culture, a throwback to a time when the rich and the famous partied here. The cars were in their prime then, beautiful examples of automobile art, the fashionable motorised chariots of the time.
Down by the beach in Trinidad
This post is overdue; possibly the one most expected from any trip to the country. Here it is then, produced so imagination isn’t required any longer.
Flaming decals in Havana
The cars known locally as cacharros and sometimes bartavias are often in a poor state of repair. The drivers are less enamoured with their vehicles than tourists are, merely unable to replace them due to American sanctions. Similarly parts are difficult to come by, if their pride and joy needs a repair it isn’t possible to pop down the local auto parts shop for spares. Cubans need to be inventive, they need to improvise.
Parking up at the Bay of Pigs
Coping with rust and replacing simple items like spark plugs, windscreen wipers or dashboard dials might not task them too greatly but clutches or gearboxes will require more invention.
Old car in Old Town, Havana
Shortage however generates opportunity, a cottage industry has sprung up fabricating the spare parts required to keep the vehicles on the road. Chrome bumpers or low-profile alloys being manufactured on front lawns by backyard entrepreneurs.
The majority of these classic vehicles are held together by duct tape and bits of cord. They may have plastic fuel tanks, rubberised brake pads and it is likely windows won’t open, brake lights don’t work and rear-view mirrors are missing.
It is westerners that romanticise about the vehicles, we describe them in terms such as classic, becoming poetic in our descriptions of their flowing lines and symmetrical curves. There are books that rhapsodise about them, magazines that feature them, mountains of photographs and pages of prose written about them. The casual observer maybe mistaken into believing that the Cuban roads are filled with stunning cacharros.
Touring in Havana
The variety of makes is as as impressive as the colours available; there are Cadillacs, Buicks, Plymouths, Chevrolets, Dodges and even Studebakers in all shades of red, green, blue, maroon, pink, brown, orange or yellow. Low slung cruisers are popular everywhere, but there are also plenty more utilitarian vehicles like pickup but convertibles appear to be a rarity.
Thankfully some are in amazing condition, they embody automobile beauty oozing a mix of female sensuality and ferrous masculinity. They seem to define the characters that drive them, their pride, their maintainence of their vehicles reflecting how the live. They also define the island for many outsiders and the Cubans have learned to profit from this perception and our romantic need for nostalgia.
The best of the vehicles are used commercially and some are even state sponsored taking gleeful tourists on a journey through cities like Havana and time. Cruising the streets of the Old Town which are lined with delapidated buildings, their glory days long forgotten but even in their retired state somehow shining in dignified splendour.
Plymouth in Cienfeugos
At the diner in Cienfeugos
It is difficult not to let these symbols of Cuban culture get under the skin, waxing lyrically about them is impossible to avoid. The proof is this post, which was intended as a photo essay allowing the images to do the talking; fail!
Havana Grill
Bike and sidecar in Cienfeugos
Looking through these pictures however I am instantly transported back to Havana. Taking my own tour in a stunning vibrant orange Buick Eight and hoping I will get another chance soon. In Cuba the car is the star.
My Buick Eight tourer
Great post! What I noticed first when I arrived in Havana was the exhaust – it hit me in the face. I love all the old cars, but it was hard to breathe them in!
Amber recently posted..The “Other” Side of Inle Lake, Myanmar, and GCSF
Thanks Amber I know what you mean, don’t think the emmision rules out there are very strict
For whatever reason, I have always wanted to go to Cuba. I do love those old cars!
Me too I was so happy to visit in June and loved every moment there, great destination.
A little Cuban jealousy going on right now… love the pictures (and the on-photo essay!, ha)… gotta get to Cuba soon before we start selling them new cars and begin destroying their culture in other ways… great post Iain. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you Charles I do hope you make it to Cuba soon as it is a great destination and the reasons of the changing culture are why I decided I wanted to go sooner rather than later.
Lovely post! I can’t imagine Cuba without its eye-catching cars:).
They definitely play a huge part of the culture Miruna