January 3, 2012 • 11 mins
Cuba has a lot of American cars -- most of which are from the 1930s to the 1950s, when the embargo hit full force. Learn how these car owners have kept their vehicles running for decades without access to new parts in this podcast.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from how stuff works dot com. Welcome back
to high Speed Stuff. Thanks for tuning in. You've got
been here. That's me. You've got Scott over there, the
head auto editor stepped over here. But that's all right now.
(00:21):
How's gone? It's going well, man, Except to be honest
with you, Scott. You know, things really pick up here
after the holidays around March. It's a pretty busy time
for us everything. And so we're here somewhere between the
winter holidays and the and the golden days of summer.
And to be honest, I'm feeling a vacation. Okay, I
(00:42):
wonder where are you going with that? But I now
I see what what's up? What are you? What are
you planning? Well? I was thinking about a couple of
different places. You know. I won't bore you with the details.
I'll get right down to it. I wanted to go
to Cuba, but we can't really go to Cuba very
easily in this country. That's right, Yeah, you can't really,
But you wouldn't be a very interesting place to visit,
I'll tell you that. And there's one thing I think
(01:03):
you would be very interested in my friend, and sure
I would be. I think I know what you're talking about.
What is it? Classic cars? Classic cars? Yeah, that's right.
He has got a ton of classic cars. There's kind
of an oddity, there's a reason why that happened, But
the streets are filled with classic cars. Now we say classic,
let's say we're we're talking uh ballpark years. What's what's
(01:23):
the newest classic car? I would say nineteen fifty nine
would be the newest. Possibly nineteen sixty. I'm not sure,
just because of you know, the model year of the vehicle.
But yeah, you're talking late fifties American vehicles, so so
anything American that's a vehicle in Cuba is probably late fifties.
Huh yeah, well that's right at the at the least,
(01:46):
that's right. Yeah. And the reason behind that is because
there was a revolution nine Cuban revolution, the end of it,
and that's when the U. S imposed a trade e
bargo and from that point forward, no US cars were important. Yeah,
and we should I guess we should be fair to
say that this this situation in Cuba, what began around
nineteen fifty three um proceeded to UH fifty nine, right,
(02:10):
and then at sixty was a it was a hard
cut off probably in fifty nine. So the only the
only cars that would be nineteen sixty American models, if
there are any, um are probably ones that came over
nineteen fifty nine. Probably. Yeah, that's that's the best guess.
I mean, I've never been there to see them, right
or you can't really, it's tough to verify something like that,
but yeah, that's uh, that's a good guess, right A
(02:31):
running the late fifties and fifty nine. Probably now these
things are still running, is that true? Yeah, they're in
very good condition. That's the That's the strange part about
this is that you know, if you're cut off from
the supply of something and this is all you have left,
you're gonna be You're gonna maintain that vehicle, you know,
the best way that you can. You're gonna keep it
in tip top running condition. And that's what they do.
(02:52):
And they've actually made a you know, a bit of
a um a little bit of an industry out of it.
You know, they run classic taxi cabs and you know
Schoffeuring type services where you know people you know, it's
it's an oddity. I mean it's it's pretty awesome to
be able to get into let's say, you know, nineteen
fifty seven Chevy and you know, tour Cuba with with
(03:12):
the local you know, who can point out all of
the all of you know, the the interesting highlights and
you know, maybe along the coast or wherever you want
to go, and you know, it might cost you fifty
dollars a day or something like that. But that's you know,
pretty good money for a Cuban right now. Um, I
think I read something that you know, they said that
the average Cuban makes, you know, fifteen a month was
something that I read. So I can imagine making fifty
(03:35):
dollars in one day just by you know, taking some
tourists around town. Sure, you've gotta be doing pretty well.
And plus, you know that helps you maintain your vehicle.
You'll be able to buy parts or you know, have
something worked on that needs to be repaired. Um. You know,
it's it's vital for them to keep these cars, really
important for them, critical, I should say, for them to
keep these cars in top running form. Well, let's let's
take a second and talk about that, Scott, because that
(03:57):
seems very interesting. The part the maintenance brings up two
immediate questions. Uh. Number one, how are these parts taking
care of? Because a lot of parts that I guess
we would call in America we call disposable or something.
You know, Um, those could present difficulty, especially if we're
(04:17):
talking US cars, because they need us parts. Uh. And
then the second question would be, which I guess you've
already kind of answered the cost of maintaining this vehicle,
you know, especially given if someone only makes fifteen to
twenty a month. Oh sure, yeah, Well, you know, not
everybody's running the taxi services, and not everybody's doing the
reason it to get back and forth from work or
(04:38):
to travel across the island whatever they have to do. Um,
so not everybody is making money off their cars, so
they're you know, they are investing in parts and repairs. Um.
This I guess are apparently very crafty and you know
how they have they come up with these are very
very clever. Um. You know, parts are fabricated or created. Um,
they carve steering wheels you know out of would that
(04:59):
you know normally wouldn't be a wooden piece, but you
know this in this case, it is they you know,
they fabricate parts that you and I wouldn't normally think
in a way that you and I wouldn't normally think
to do. So they're very clever and um, but they're
also very conscious that, you know, it has to be Um.
They're not worried about making an accurate or anything like that,
but I mean they're they're conscious that they have to
(05:20):
keep that car running. Yeah, it's important. So um. You know.
The the odd thing like we we talked about is that,
you know, there's so many of these cars, and I
think we should talk about the numbers maybe a little bit.
Do you have some numbers? Well, I have kind of
just a rough guess at these numbers because nothing's really
you know, set in stone exacting on this. All right, Well,
I've got some rough numbers here because nothing's set in
(05:42):
stone for this. So, um, you know, if we if
we talk about how many cars are on the island
in ninety nine, the numbers estimated it around one. Okay,
I've seen recent numbers that say that right now there
are sixty thousand classics that remain on the island, and
then that's right thousand drivable classics that remain on You know,
that means that you know, either there's a bunch of
(06:04):
cars that are junk on the island, or they've been
cannibalizing them for parts, or they're just you know, laying
in junkyards somewhere. They're they're just gone to ruin, possibly
barn finds, possibly could be Yeah, well we'll talk about
those later maybe. And um, of those of those sixty thousand,
it's estimated that from the nineteen fifties, so that's a
(06:25):
lot of them. Thirty thousand or from that of those
are from the nineteen forties and another or pre date
the forties. So yeah, so there's some pretty old vehicles
out there right now that are still in operation on
the island. So it's gotta be really something to see. Um,
you know, just a day in town might look like,
you know, a classic car event here in the States exactly.
(06:47):
I would really like to see that. I would as well.
I can just see the packard pulling up right, yeah, sure,
you know, with seating for eight in a four door
vehicle ahead. I've got to ask where we're talking so
far about American cars, because it was an American trade
embargo that that placed Cuba in this anachronistic environment. But
(07:09):
I've also looked into things a little bit, and it
seems like there's America is not the only player in
the car game in Cuba. Is that true? That's true? Yeah, yeah,
there are some imports that are coming from other nations
that you know, they just have this trade embark with
the U S. So. Um. I'm not sure if it
covers anybody else or not as well, but I know
that there have been some cars imported from Russia. There
(07:30):
have been some cars that have come in from France
and Italy. Um. So you may see a Pougeot, or
you may see a Fiat or something like that. The
odd thing is, and this is you know, I don't
know if this is funny or what, but those cars
seem to not last as long as the cars from
the US that we're built in the nineteen fifties. So
the newer vehicles are I don't want to call them disposable,
(07:53):
but they kind of are. They're not They're not lasting,
uh as you know, as the the American assets are
there there in the end of the at the end
of the day, they're not as durable to the people
in Cuba. Correct, Okay, well, there could be some reasons
for that. Right there. There's more. Uh, as we said,
just from it's a pretty high attrition rate to go
(08:14):
from a hundred fifty thousand cars to sixty. So there's
definitely we have to assume there's some sort of cannibalization
and maybe there's not another, you know, another few cars
for every Fiat out there, So maybe they just don't
have the parts that once it's broken, it's broken. That's
it that sits there for years and years or if
(08:35):
it ever gets back up on its feet. So yeah,
there's there's a lot of reasons. I mean, like you said,
they've they've you know, the supply has dwindled. But the
ones that are there and still operating, you know, they're
they're well maintained, well taking care of what a vacation
that would be the it would be. Yeah, Well, I
don't know. Do do you have any anything else for
(08:55):
us about classic cars in Cuba? No, not really, but
I would like to, I think before we close out here,
I'd like to do something here. I'd like to read
UM a message that we got from a listener, the
listener mail. Yeah, listener mail, that's great, it's actually something UM.
This is something that we said that UM you had
(09:16):
at your nephew. So uh not a nephew four year
old friend of mine? Ian? Oh a friend okay for
your old friend of yours. Okay, gotcha. N listen is
for Ian. I guess. Um. He mentioned that cars look
like they have a face. Yes, and one of our listeners, Brandon,
wrote it and said that there's a good reason that
they look like they have a face, and that is
because the marketing. Um, that's a marketing reason. He says
(09:40):
that they want to make it look like it's a
happy car or a fun car. And I kind of
believe that. I mean, if you think back to he
mentions the Mini as a new example, Um, look back
to the Dad's Neon. When that vehicle first came out,
they had the front end of the car would look
like a clearly look like a smiling face. And I
think the your ad campaign was something as simple as
(10:01):
high or hello or something like that. It was very
very simple, and um, yeah, I seem to pay off.
I mean they sold the millions, I mean, well millions
one of those vehicles. Um, so you know, I think
there's a good, good reason behind that. But a lot
of cars do have to look like a face. Um,
you know, I said, and I'm sure you know everybody
has a spot at that, but there's a good reason
behind it. Sells cars. Yeah, and we we checked on
(10:24):
this mail to I guess we should just ended that
part was saying that Brandon recommends the four year old
should go to business school. Is how he ended the email, right,
that's right now, Brandon, I also noticed is going to
Michigan State University, so maybe he is uh the m
s U Business School in mind. So maybe you can
(10:45):
cut on tuition or something. Yeah, maybe we can build
some build some bridges to make some connections here. Maybe. Well,
thank you so much Brandon for writing in. And I
want to take a moment here to embarrass Scott just
a little. You're way too modest to brag about it.
But we have a blow dog on the homepage now
it's the high Speed Stuff blog. That's right, we do.
And you again, you can find on the homepage and
(11:07):
posts there every day, so you know, it's a chance
for people to you know, right back and you know,
make their opinions known. Yeah, it's check it out. Fascinating
information about all things auto related and you can find
it on the homepage of how stuff works dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
(11:28):
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow the
house stuff works. I find app has a ride. Download
it today on iTunes, m
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from how stuff works dot com. Welcome back
to high Speed Stuff. Thanks for tuning in. You've got
been here. That's me. You've got Scott over there, the
head auto editor stepped over here. But that's all right now.
(00:21):
How's gone? It's going well, man, Except to be honest
with you, Scott. You know, things really pick up here
after the holidays around March. It's a pretty busy time
for us everything. And so we're here somewhere between the
winter holidays and the and the golden days of summer.
And to be honest, I'm feeling a vacation. Okay, I
(00:42):
wonder where are you going with that? But I now
I see what what's up? What are you? What are
you planning? Well? I was thinking about a couple of
different places. You know. I won't bore you with the details.
I'll get right down to it. I wanted to go
to Cuba, but we can't really go to Cuba very
easily in this country. That's right, Yeah, you can't really,
But you wouldn't be a very interesting place to visit,
I'll tell you that. And there's one thing I think
(01:03):
you would be very interested in my friend, and sure
I would be. I think I know what you're talking about.
What is it? Classic cars? Classic cars? Yeah, that's right.
He has got a ton of classic cars. There's kind
of an oddity, there's a reason why that happened, But
the streets are filled with classic cars. Now we say classic,
let's say we're we're talking uh ballpark years. What's what's
(01:23):
the newest classic car? I would say nineteen fifty nine
would be the newest. Possibly nineteen sixty. I'm not sure,
just because of you know, the model year of the vehicle.
But yeah, you're talking late fifties American vehicles, so so
anything American that's a vehicle in Cuba is probably late fifties.
Huh yeah, well that's right at the at the least,
(01:46):
that's right. Yeah. And the reason behind that is because
there was a revolution nine Cuban revolution, the end of it,
and that's when the U. S imposed a trade e
bargo and from that point forward, no US cars were important. Yeah,
and we should I guess we should be fair to
say that this this situation in Cuba, what began around
nineteen fifty three um proceeded to UH fifty nine, right,
(02:10):
and then at sixty was a it was a hard
cut off probably in fifty nine. So the only the
only cars that would be nineteen sixty American models, if
there are any, um are probably ones that came over
nineteen fifty nine. Probably. Yeah, that's that's the best guess.
I mean, I've never been there to see them, right
or you can't really, it's tough to verify something like that,
but yeah, that's uh, that's a good guess, right A
(02:31):
running the late fifties and fifty nine. Probably now these
things are still running, is that true? Yeah, they're in
very good condition. That's the That's the strange part about
this is that you know, if you're cut off from
the supply of something and this is all you have left,
you're gonna be You're gonna maintain that vehicle, you know,
the best way that you can. You're gonna keep it
in tip top running condition. And that's what they do.
(02:52):
And they've actually made a you know, a bit of
a um a little bit of an industry out of it.
You know, they run classic taxi cabs and you know
Schoffeuring type services where you know people you know, it's
it's an oddity. I mean it's it's pretty awesome to
be able to get into let's say, you know, nineteen
fifty seven Chevy and you know, tour Cuba with with
(03:12):
the local you know, who can point out all of
the all of you know, the the interesting highlights and
you know, maybe along the coast or wherever you want
to go, and you know, it might cost you fifty
dollars a day or something like that. But that's you know,
pretty good money for a Cuban right now. Um, I
think I read something that you know, they said that
the average Cuban makes, you know, fifteen a month was
something that I read. So I can imagine making fifty
(03:35):
dollars in one day just by you know, taking some
tourists around town. Sure, you've gotta be doing pretty well.
And plus, you know that helps you maintain your vehicle.
You'll be able to buy parts or you know, have
something worked on that needs to be repaired. Um. You know,
it's it's vital for them to keep these cars, really
important for them, critical, I should say, for them to
keep these cars in top running form. Well, let's let's
take a second and talk about that, Scott, because that
(03:57):
seems very interesting. The part the maintenance brings up two
immediate questions. Uh. Number one, how are these parts taking
care of? Because a lot of parts that I guess
we would call in America we call disposable or something.
You know, Um, those could present difficulty, especially if we're
(04:17):
talking US cars, because they need us parts. Uh. And
then the second question would be, which I guess you've
already kind of answered the cost of maintaining this vehicle,
you know, especially given if someone only makes fifteen to
twenty a month. Oh sure, yeah, Well, you know, not
everybody's running the taxi services, and not everybody's doing the
reason it to get back and forth from work or
(04:38):
to travel across the island whatever they have to do. Um,
so not everybody is making money off their cars, so
they're you know, they are investing in parts and repairs. Um.
This I guess are apparently very crafty and you know
how they have they come up with these are very
very clever. Um. You know, parts are fabricated or created. Um,
they carve steering wheels you know out of would that
(04:59):
you know normally wouldn't be a wooden piece, but you
know this in this case, it is they you know,
they fabricate parts that you and I wouldn't normally think
in a way that you and I wouldn't normally think
to do. So they're very clever and um, but they're
also very conscious that, you know, it has to be Um.
They're not worried about making an accurate or anything like that,
but I mean they're they're conscious that they have to
(05:20):
keep that car running. Yeah, it's important. So um. You know.
The the odd thing like we we talked about is that,
you know, there's so many of these cars, and I
think we should talk about the numbers maybe a little bit.
Do you have some numbers? Well, I have kind of
just a rough guess at these numbers because nothing's really
you know, set in stone exacting on this. All right, Well,
I've got some rough numbers here because nothing's set in
(05:42):
stone for this. So, um, you know, if we if
we talk about how many cars are on the island
in ninety nine, the numbers estimated it around one. Okay,
I've seen recent numbers that say that right now there
are sixty thousand classics that remain on the island, and
then that's right thousand drivable classics that remain on You know,
that means that you know, either there's a bunch of
(06:04):
cars that are junk on the island, or they've been
cannibalizing them for parts, or they're just you know, laying
in junkyards somewhere. They're they're just gone to ruin, possibly
barn finds, possibly could be Yeah, well we'll talk about
those later maybe. And um, of those of those sixty thousand,
it's estimated that from the nineteen fifties, so that's a
(06:25):
lot of them. Thirty thousand or from that of those
are from the nineteen forties and another or pre date
the forties. So yeah, so there's some pretty old vehicles
out there right now that are still in operation on
the island. So it's gotta be really something to see. Um,
you know, just a day in town might look like,
you know, a classic car event here in the States exactly.
(06:47):
I would really like to see that. I would as well.
I can just see the packard pulling up right, yeah, sure,
you know, with seating for eight in a four door
vehicle ahead. I've got to ask where we're talking so
far about American cars, because it was an American trade
embargo that that placed Cuba in this anachronistic environment. But
(07:09):
I've also looked into things a little bit, and it
seems like there's America is not the only player in
the car game in Cuba. Is that true? That's true? Yeah, yeah,
there are some imports that are coming from other nations
that you know, they just have this trade embark with
the U S. So. Um. I'm not sure if it
covers anybody else or not as well, but I know
that there have been some cars imported from Russia. There
(07:30):
have been some cars that have come in from France
and Italy. Um. So you may see a Pougeot, or
you may see a Fiat or something like that. The
odd thing is, and this is you know, I don't
know if this is funny or what, but those cars
seem to not last as long as the cars from
the US that we're built in the nineteen fifties. So
the newer vehicles are I don't want to call them disposable,
(07:53):
but they kind of are. They're not They're not lasting,
uh as you know, as the the American assets are
there there in the end of the at the end
of the day, they're not as durable to the people
in Cuba. Correct, Okay, well, there could be some reasons
for that. Right there. There's more. Uh, as we said,
just from it's a pretty high attrition rate to go
(08:14):
from a hundred fifty thousand cars to sixty. So there's
definitely we have to assume there's some sort of cannibalization
and maybe there's not another, you know, another few cars
for every Fiat out there, So maybe they just don't
have the parts that once it's broken, it's broken. That's
it that sits there for years and years or if
(08:35):
it ever gets back up on its feet. So yeah,
there's there's a lot of reasons. I mean, like you said,
they've they've you know, the supply has dwindled. But the
ones that are there and still operating, you know, they're
they're well maintained, well taking care of what a vacation
that would be the it would be. Yeah, Well, I
don't know. Do do you have any anything else for
(08:55):
us about classic cars in Cuba? No, not really, but
I would like to, I think before we close out here,
I'd like to do something here. I'd like to read
UM a message that we got from a listener, the
listener mail. Yeah, listener mail, that's great, it's actually something UM.
This is something that we said that UM you had
(09:16):
at your nephew. So uh not a nephew four year
old friend of mine? Ian? Oh a friend okay for
your old friend of yours. Okay, gotcha. N listen is
for Ian. I guess. Um. He mentioned that cars look
like they have a face. Yes, and one of our listeners, Brandon,
wrote it and said that there's a good reason that
they look like they have a face, and that is
because the marketing. Um, that's a marketing reason. He says
(09:40):
that they want to make it look like it's a
happy car or a fun car. And I kind of
believe that. I mean, if you think back to he
mentions the Mini as a new example, Um, look back
to the Dad's Neon. When that vehicle first came out,
they had the front end of the car would look
like a clearly look like a smiling face. And I
think the your ad campaign was something as simple as
(10:01):
high or hello or something like that. It was very
very simple, and um, yeah, I seem to pay off.
I mean they sold the millions, I mean, well millions
one of those vehicles. Um, so you know, I think
there's a good, good reason behind that. But a lot
of cars do have to look like a face. Um,
you know, I said, and I'm sure you know everybody
has a spot at that, but there's a good reason
behind it. Sells cars. Yeah, and we we checked on
(10:24):
this mail to I guess we should just ended that
part was saying that Brandon recommends the four year old
should go to business school. Is how he ended the email, right,
that's right now, Brandon, I also noticed is going to
Michigan State University, so maybe he is uh the m
s U Business School in mind. So maybe you can
(10:45):
cut on tuition or something. Yeah, maybe we can build
some build some bridges to make some connections here. Maybe. Well,
thank you so much Brandon for writing in. And I
want to take a moment here to embarrass Scott just
a little. You're way too modest to brag about it.
But we have a blow dog on the homepage now
it's the high Speed Stuff blog. That's right, we do.
And you again, you can find on the homepage and
(11:07):
posts there every day, so you know, it's a chance
for people to you know, right back and you know,
make their opinions known. Yeah, it's check it out. Fascinating
information about all things auto related and you can find
it on the homepage of how stuff works dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
(11:28):
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow the
house stuff works. I find app has a ride. Download
it today on iTunes, m
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