Those beautiful American Girls

Their chrome sparkling, their bright colors gleaming, the most beautiful American cars of the 1940s and 1950s (Chevrolet, Ford, Oldsmobile,) are found in Cuba and they drive its streets everyday.

Conscious of their value, Fidel Castro has begun including them as a national heritage.

Do Cubans really have a particular passion for beautiful American cars? Not really. Necessity made it that they must be maintained with great care since the Americans left the island in 1959 without leaving any spare parts behind.

In almost every alley you'll see an old American car being jealously hoarded and cared for just waiting for a Sunday drive, that is if one can find the petrol to get it rolling. Mechanical problems are frequent, but Cuban mechanics are the masters of improvisation and repairing the irreparable.
American models aren't the only beautiful cars in circulation in Cuba. You can also find old Mercedes, Saabs, Peugeots and even Renault 4 CVs.

But THE Cuban car is the Lada, one of the legacies of the accords with the Soviet Union, which remains the favorite car of most Cubans, and is the model for a majority of the taxis in Cuba. There is even a limousine version of the Lada. This is one particularity about Cuba that won't last long because the Japanese have already landed...