The classic cars of Havana
September 21, 2017
As a petrol head, illegal street racing scene in the movies can always touch my heart, while this time it blew my mind by showing 1949 Chevrolets Fleetlin race 1956 Ford Crown Victoria on the ramshackle, half-ruined, but somehow beautiful main street of Havana, just as Pico Iyer wrote,”…in communist Cuba you will find shortages of everything except ironies.” It made me grasp the chance to Cuba in the last second. Back to the United States or any other country except Cuba, these mostly 50s and 60s classic American cars would be cream puffs, pampered darlings, something too precious to show the public. Here in Havana, however, they’re taxi cabs. Daily drivers. The livelihood and lifeblood of their ingenious owners. Fords, Buicks, and Plymouths. The occasional Cadillac, Studebaker or DeSoto, and everywhere, Chevrolets.
