Why do people in Cuba drive 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s cars? Is there a high import rate for cars that only the rich can afford. I always see Cuba like it’s stuck in a time warp. Why is that?
I’d say it has a lot to do with a certain embargo preventing Cubans from getting that 2003 Neon they’ve had their eye on.
No. Japan produces lots of cars, and will trade with Cuba.
Yes, but Cuba’s economy has been in the toilet for the past 40 odd years, so it’s kind of hard to buy that fancy Nissan if you’ve got no money.
Interestingly, if the embargo was lifted, I bet there are a lot of Americans who’d be happy to trade a cheap new car (maybe a $9000 Kia) for a well-maintained 1949 Packard.
Screw waiting for the embargo to end. IIRC, you Canucks haven’t been suckered in by such foolishness, so here’s my idea: Go to Cuba, start buying up all the classic cars we can find (even a '57 Chevy in good shape is worth $20K in the US), import 'em to Canada, get Canadian titles for 'em, then run 'em cross the boarders into the US and sell 'em for big money! Whatcha think?
I have travelled to Cuba 5 times, and most of the older cars there are in pretty bad shape, not even worth restoring. Most are very rusty, and they have been repaired with parts from Soviet cars and tractors. Yes, a '57 Chevy might be powered by a Soviet tractor motor, and painted with house paint. These cars have been driven every day for the past 50 or 60 years, and without access to the proper replacement parts, the Cubans have had to use whatever is available. There are some Japanese cars there now, but out of necessity every old car is kept on the road also.
In the case of some models, it really doesn’t matter how far they’re gone, a fully restored version can still bring you a tidy profit. There’s probably only a handful of those in Cuba, but they’d still be worth saving. Especially if they could be bought for only a couple hundred dollars.
I read a magazine article (mighta been Car & Driver) about how there is an underground network of people who can make parts for these old cars, including piston rings! Tell an engineer about home-made piston rings and see how long it takes him to laugh. But these people do it, somehow. Good on 'em
capn
Hi Tuckerfan,
The Cubans are aware of how desireable some of their cars are, and will quote you $5,000 or $10,000 for their cars. 99% of the older cars there are 4 door sedans, you are not going to see many two-door hardtops or convertibles. Being a communist country, all homes and cars are the property of the government anyway, so the people can’t sell their cars even if they want to. I have read the same article in Cars and Parts mentioned by capn, and even they were saying that most the cars are beyond restoration.
I read something about how to make your own piston rings not too long ago, but I can’t remember where. From what I recall, it wasn’t that uncommon at one time here in the States for folks to make their own piston rings. You have to remember that the tolerances on those engines back then are nowhere near as tight as they are today, and if you’ve got a Soviet engine under the hood, well, you just have to be in the ballpark.
simple homer four door cars are actually starting to go up in value, since people can’t afford to buy the coupes and convertables anymore. Nearly every collectors car magazine I’ve read recently has predicted that the next thing to take off is going to be sales of station wagons. And the Cubans may say that they want $5K or $10K for their cars, but if the articles I’ve read detailing the hardships that most of them have to endure are accurate, they’ll settle for a few hundred bucks quickly enough. As for the restoration matters, well, I’ve seen guys rework Studebakers which everyone said were beyond salvaging into gorgeous machines that they could resell for a profit if they wanted to. Now, when it comes to getting them out of the country, given the numbers of Cubans that have washed up on our shores (and that one guy who almost managed to drive here), I’d say that wouldn’t be too difficult.
Sorry for bringing up the MGB again, but I think it might be relevant. It was in worse shape than I thought, but it was complete. Being a unibody, rust is a Very Bad Thing™. It needed new floorboards, new lower fender panels, new main crossmember, and new rocker assemblies (fairly complex assemblies, which give the unibody its strength). The total cost of restoration will be just about as much as – maybe more than – the cost of buying a completely restored, mint-condition MGB.
Is it worth salvaging? Hard to say. I won’t be able to sell it for a profit, but I’m not going to sell it. With the demise of MG Rover, which Tuckerfan posted in MPSIMS, it might make it more desireable in the future. (Or not, since the B has been out of production for a quarter-century.) But the point is that it can be done.
MGBs are fortunate, in that the British Motor Heritage Trust is still making OEM sheet metal. Not so for a Studebaker or an old Chevy; but the mechanical parts seem to be plentiful in the U.S. Used sheet metal can’t be that hard to find, and some body shops have metal-magicians working for them who can work wonders with damaged bits. In my unexpert opinion, many Cuban cars are saveable.
As has been pointed out, Cubans can buy Japanese cars but they can’t afford them. They will also face the problem of getting or affording repair parts. It’s a lot easier, I think, to repair an old-tech car than to repair a faulty computer module.
I think it might be barely possible for an enrepreneurial Canadian to make a good business out of importing Cuban Classics and selling them to U.S. collectors. (And if I may interject a political opinion; I too, think the embargo is stupid.)
To add to what Johnny L.A. said, it also depends upon how you decide to figure the costs as to whether or not something’s restorable. Some folks would say that I’d have to factor my roadtrip to Denver, plus all the oil and gas used by my Chrysler in determining if it was worth the cost to restore. That, IMHO, is utterly ridiculous. A.) The trip out to Denver was an adventure, which I otherwise wouldn’t have had. B.) Oil and gas are just part of the normal operating expenses of any vehicle, so to say I have to account for those costs is just foolish. C.) If you’re going to demand that the costs for gas and oil be factored into the calculation, then you need to factor in everything else as well: cost of electricity to run the tools that you used to restore the car, cost of lightbulbs for your drop light, so you could keep working on the car long into the night, etc., etc., etc. Jay Leno says that if you make any profit off of a car restoration, you’re ripping somebody off. Either the work you did wasn’t very good, or you’re selling the car for more than it’s worth.
BUT- could you actually get them titled in the US? In theory, you can buy a car in Canada and get it titled and licensed in the US, but the process is, I’m told, quite daunting. What kind of red tape would one go through to get a car from Cuba to Canada and thence to the US?
I don’t know about the process for getting it titled in Canada after importing it from Cuba, but IIRC (and there’s a thread about this somewhere), it’s not really that much of a hassle to get a car imported into the US from Canada, it’s just kind of pricey. This is done to prevent hordes of 'Merkins from streaming across the boarder and loading up on cheap new cars as well as cheap drugs as they sack our neighbor to the North, before heading back home leaving nothing but destructiton and McDonald’s wrappers in their wake (and you thought we were kidding when we said we’d avenge ourselves for your inflincting Celine Dion on us). With an older car, you wouldn’t have to worry so much about that.
I do know that the reuirements for licensing a privately-imported car in Canada are a lot less strict if the car is older than, say, 1980. But presumably the car has to be roadworthy… I wonder whether any of these Cuban vehicles could qualify? And how would we get the Cuban government to sell them to us?
Define “roadworthy” for a car built when seatbelts didn’t exsist, backup lights were optional, and dashboards were metal. As for the title matter, I don’t know. Cuba has extended private property rights a few times to the population, so they may, in fact, have titles. If not, one might be able to obtain the necessary paperwork for putting money in the right hands, if you know what I mean. Something else that just occured to me: There can’t be that many Soviet era tractor engines in the US. I bet someone could recoup the costs of the restoration by offering those engines for sale to people who collect oddball engines in the US (and there is a market for such things here).
I also read in a magazine…National Geographic, IIRC…how an enterprising Cuban backyard engineer makes his own piston rings by hacksawing a thin slice off of a cast-iron pipe.
Except it didn’t work.
Nice idea, but not a very successful smuggling technique.