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If I had a Volga, I'd name it Olga

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The Volga 24 was introduced in 1970 and became the 2410 in 1985.
   No. 4 on Ramon Rivera and Jay Ramey's list of10 cars to see in Cuba is the GAZ Volga 2410, a Russian-built sedan. What you see here is the 2410's predecessor, the Volga 24. But as a Cuban mechanic might say while transferring a bumper from one to the other, "Close enough!"
   The Volga 24 entered full production in 1970, but its mid-1960s lines – with nods, shall we say, to the Chevy II, Plymouth Valiant and Ford Falcon – bear evidence of a long gestation. A fullsize car by most of the world's standards, its mechanical arrangements were typical for the era with front coil springs, unit-body construction and a live rear axle suspended from leaf springs. The engine was a 90-horsepower, 2.5-litre four-cylinder, linked to a four-speed manual transmission.
Construction was strong to meet the rigours of police and taxi service.
   After a moderate facelift and a boost to 100 h.p. in 1985, the 24 became the 2410 of Rivera and Ramey's list. It and later variants would stay in production until 2009, with the final models displaying much more aerodynamic styling, though with the same central structure and doors of the first Volga 24 of four decades earlier.
   The 24 was intended as the Soviet mid-market car, sturdy enough for police and taxi service and with sufficient visual presence to proclaim that the communist party functionary allotted one was a rung up from Lada status.
   Robert Kim, in an entertaining discussion at Curbside Classic, suggests the Volga 24 was meant to fill the same multi-purpose roles as the Chevrolet Caprice and other General Motors B-Body models.
   It succeeded at this, though it could never approach the refinement of the GM sedans. Kim writes that he has ridden in dozens of Volgas, "and every one was an ordeal featuring the unpleasant roar of a large four banger, gasoline fumes, wind rushing around doors with massive panel gaps, and a jolting ride."



Four-on-the-floor manual was, for a long time, the only available transmission.
   I owned a B-Body, a 1986 Caprice Classic with plush interior and two-tone gold-over-brown paint. It was great car, reliable as sunrise, steady at speed and more nimble through curves than it had a right to be.
   Perhaps, had I lived in the Soviet Union then instead of Canada, I would have had a Volga. I know what I would have called it.

The American influence is clear in the Volga 24's handsome, mid-1960s lines.


The light burns brighter

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Chevrolet row: A new proposal for an international tour.
   The renewal of U.S.-Cuba relations, however tentative, has been a tonic for Rick Shnitzler of TailLight Diplomacy.
   Shnitzler is a co-founder of the Philadelphia group, which has long pressed for closer ties between vintage car owners in the two nations. But by 2013, with the political divide seemingly as deep as ever, the effort was sputtering, Michael Matza reports in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
   That changed with December's surprise announcement, and an invigorated Shnitzler now has a new proposal: bring a select number of Cuban cars and their owners to the United States – and perhaps other countries too – for a friendship tour.
Organizing such a car-culture exchange would be a huge task, of course, going beyond even Shnitzler's earlier call to include Cuban cars in Detroit's yearly Woodward Dream Cruise. But the "inveterate dreamer" is undaunted as he talks up the idea with government, media and the antique-auto community.

  And at a time when Cuban and American delegations are meeting face-to-face for historic normalization talks, everything seems possible.

See also:

The Gullwing's topless sister – and, perhaps, a Corvette clue

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300SL Roadster is said to have been driven into the 1980s.
   In answer to the Internet's seemingly bottomless appetite for news of the Cuba Gullwing, Miguel Llorente of This European Life has posted more photos from his inspection of the crumbling classic in 2012. Doubt it looks any better today.
  Miguel has also put up some previously unseen images of a Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster that rests back-to-back with the Gullwing. A few are reprinted here.

Plenty of rust, but still lots to work with.
    Though not as coveted as its coupe sibling – few cars are – the convertible 300SL produced from 1957 to 1963 is a beautiful car in is own right. And this example, with removable hardtop in place, is notable for a couple of reasons:
● Unlike its Gullwing companion, it might be fixable. Though much reworked over the years and with a Chevy V-8 in place of its original inline six-cylinder engine, the car looks reasonably intact, bodywise. In the hands of one of Cuba's master bodymen, it could become quite presentable.
 That Chevrolet engine is said to have been lifted from a Corvette. From photos at This European Life, we can see that the valve covers do not appear Corvette-correct. Still, maybe the engine did come from one of the few Corvettes we know to have been in Cuban hands, and maybe the donor car was the '56 owned by the younger Batista. If so, the big question is – where's the rest of it?

Floorboards were rebuilt in stainless steel.

Taillights look German – but as in Volkswagen German, not Mercedes-Benz.



See also:



A higher calibre of motorbike

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ZiD Voskhod was the 'luxury alternative' to the smaller Minsk M1A.
   Guns and motorcycles have similar requirements – spare design, quality materials, precise assembly – so it follows that the manufacturer of one might also be drawn to produce the other.
   A famous example of this is the Birmingham Small Arms Co., formed in the mid 19th century to make military rifles and later expanding to bicycles, motorcycles, even cars. Its BSA Motorcycles subsidiary would become the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer from the mid-1930s to the early 1960s, issuing handsome models like the Thunderbolt and Gold Star.
   Russia has two versions of BSA. First to arrive was IZh, an offshoot of the mighty Izhevsky foundries in a region east of Moscow that has been making weapons since the time of Tsar Alexander I.

   IZh's first bikes, produced in modest numbers in the 1920s, were large-displacement twins. They were followed in the 1930s by models based on the small-displacement German DKW E-300, and after the Second World War by a 350-cc single-cylinder bike built from DKW tooling removed from Germany by the Soviets as reparations. 
Old bike, new mirrors.
  The other brand is ZiD, for Zavod Iniemi Degtyarev, or Degtyarev plant, a division of a machine-gun manufacturer in the city of Kovrov. In 1946, ZiD began assembling its first bike, the 125-cc K-55. Yet again, the K-55 was a Russian version of a DKW model, the time the famous (and much copied) RT 125.
   The ZiD seen here is the Voskhod, or Sunrise, a 175-cc twin with dual pipes and five-speed gearbox introduced in 1957. The Voskhod remained in production until the 1980s, at least – this Cuban example could be of 1970s vintage.
  Michele Cuoccio of the Autosoviet website reports that Soviet citizens had only a limited choice of motorcycle models, and the Voskhod was viewed as the "luxury alternative" to the smaller Minsk M1A, a version of the (you guessed it) DKW RT 125.
   BSA collapsed in the 1970s, unable to compete with the well-designed and reliable motorcycles flooding in from Japan. But IZh and ZiD, now held by separate conglomerates after much reorganization following the Soviet collapse, continue to build bikes, according to their websites.
   IZh's offerings look unchanged from the 1980s. All with 350-cc twin-cylinder engines, they include some dowdy looking street bikes, a "chopper class" model with raked frame and teardrop-shaped gas tank and several three-wheel cargo bikes.
 Still, IZh did display an edgy "concept" bike with electric and gas power in 2012, so there could be more life left in a manufacturer said to have built more than 11 million motorcycles over its history.
   ZiD's site shows a large selection of scooters, motorcycles, cargo bikes and even a collapsible snowmobile you can apparently carry in the trunk of your car (every Canadian should have one). Unlike IZh, most of ZiD's designs are modern. Some are licensed from China's Lifan Industry Group.
   Oh, and both companies will also sell you guns.



Displacement: 175 cc.

Voskhod is Russian for Sunrise.





Bright as an egg yolk

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Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia: German engineering, Italian design, and on this Cuban example,
 a British-themed l
icence surround.
   IT TAKES courage – even in Cuba – to paint your ride chrome yellow. Few cars look their best in this colour, taxi cabs and pizza delivery vehicles notwithstanding.
   But for a select number of well-designed machines – think Iso Grifo or Ferrari 250 SWB – the result can be eye-poppingly wonderful. See me, it says, and acknowledge my beauty.
 
VW made the Karmann-Ghia from 1955 until 1974. Post-1959 models
had higher headlights and larger grille openings.
  You won't find an Iso or Ferrari parked under a Cuban palm tree – I don't think– but you might come across this Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia Coupe. It has a few scars and patches, but wears its bright-as-egg-yolk hue like a royal mantle.
   Headlamp placement reveals this as a "low-light" Karmann-Ghia, assembled between 1955 and 1959 at coachbuilder Karmann's plant in Osnabrück, Germany.

Steering wheel, seats are non-original.
   With the buzzy flat-four engine and swing-arm rear suspension of its Beetle sister model, the Karmann-Ghia was never a true sports car. But with styling by Carrozzeria Ghia (perhaps only Italian designs can truly be yellow), it looked as sweet as anything on the road.
   Still does.

More than 480,000 coupes and convertibles were produced at factories in Germany and Brazil.
   See another Cuban Karmann-Ghia and read about the rather unlikely contribution of famed Chrysler stylist Virgil Exner at CubanClassics.


The understated Lincoln Capri

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This 1953 Lincoln Capri has lost the "Dagmar" bumper guards and quarter-panel protrusions that were among its few original adornments. All photos by visitcuba.com.
   Cadillacs outnumber Lincolns by a big margin in Cuba, which is no surprise. In the 1950s, GM's luxury division consistently outsold its Ford Motor Co. counterpart (and easily outpaced Chrysler's Imperial brand and faltering Packard as well).
   But you will occasionally come across a fine Lincoln, especially in Havana. That's where the team from visitcuba.com spotted this 1953 Lincoln Capri convertible, not far from the Hotel Presidente on Calle G. (Interestingly, Havana is also home to a Hotel Lincoln and a Hotel Capri – the latter built by U.S. mobsters who could well have been chauffeured about in Lincolns or Cadillacs.)
   The Capri was Lincoln's top model from 1952 to '54, with a new ball-joint front suspension, recirculating-ball power steering and a hearty 317.5-cubic-inch V-8.



Does it still have its original overhead-valve V-8 engine with four-barrel Holley carburetor?
   Understated styling – and a close resemblance to Ford's lower-priced Mercury sedans – didn't help the big Lincoln in the sales wars with the flashier Cadillac. But it earned a name as a solid and fast car by dominating Mexico's famous open road race, the Carrera Panamericana.
   This Capri, tomato-red paint nicely set off by its wide-whites, is one of 2,372 convertibles made that year.


Stretched fenders suggest Continental Kit was a factory accessory, not an add-on.


See also:






This is not your father's MG

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MG6 is hardly the first sedan to wear the famous MG emblem.
   IT COULD seem like sacrilege to affix the MG badge, the same octagon that has graced so many two-place, open sports cars, to a line of generic, Chinese-built sedans and hatchbacks.
   Before we get too righteous, however, let's remember that the MG name has appeared on sedans in the past, including the 1960s-era 1100 and 1300 that were variants of a squat four-door shared with Austin, Morris, Riley and other British Motor Corp. brands.

   Nanjing Automobile picked up MG Rover in 2005 and was itself absorbed two years later by SAIC Motor Corp. Ltd., headquartered in Shanghai.

MG5 compact hatchback has more styling presence than its larger sibling.
   In 2011 SAIC stopped production of the dated TF roadster that Nanjing had inherited from MG Rover and introduced the MG6, a bland midsizer produced as sedan and five-door hatchback. The 6 was joined the following year by the MG5, a more sharply drawn five-door hatch.
  
 In Cuba, the 5 and 6 are mid-level rental choices.
   Despite the foreign ownership, MG hasn't lost its British connection. SAIC still uses the 110-year-old Longbridge plant at Birmingham for final assembly of some MG models. And the same site is home to a research and development centre that, we'd like to think, might even now be drawing up plans for a trim new two-seat roadster fully worthy of MG's famous emblem.

The 5 and 6 are mid-level offerings for rental customers in Cuba. 


This Kapitän is a survivor

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   HERE'S MORE proof that not every Cuban old-timer ticks along on some replacement Russian or Japanese diesel engine. A 1956 or '57 Opel Kapitän, this German sedan is propelled by the same six-cylinder gasoline engine with which it left the factory.
   The Kapitän has had a few useful modifications: an alternator in place of a generator, an added console, a set of aftermarket gauges. But after nearly 60 years of service, it remains remarkably close to stock.



Sold new by General Motors dealers, Opels were popular with Cuban car buyers in the 1950s.

Triple air horns are a Cuban addition, but six-cylinder engine is original.



Column-mounted shifter, and a great big wheel.





See also:

O Kapitän

CubanClassics: 1958 Opel Kapitän P1 L





'Partner Tepee' is a dumb name for a car. Or a van

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According to the Autocar review site, the Partner Tepee is 'Peugeot’s badge-engineered version of the equally convoluted sounding Citroën Berlingo Multispace.'



Spotted! The elusive Chana 'Alfwin'

Racing returns, a quarter mile at a time

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A '32 or '33 Ford Altered Coupe makes a run during one of the rare state-approved race days. 

   ORGANIZED DRAG racing still hadn't reached Cuba when Fidel Castro gave motorsports the black flag in the early 1960s.
   Rallies and road races were the island's competitions of choice, starting with the 100-mile Havana Cup in 1905. The racing scene grew significantly in the 1950s (as it did in so many countries), with three Gran Premio de Cuba events attracting some of the world's top drivers.
   Then the new government banned car racing and other "bourgeois" professional sports, throwing its support behind the amateur athletics it felt was more in keeping with the socialist ideal.
   Of late, however, drag racing has somehow found a toehold, with occasional state-sanctioned race days and a small but fervent street racing movement in the Cuban capital. The latter is the topic of a documentary, Havana Motor Club, that will debut this month at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Tri-Five Chevrolets like this '56 two-door sedan are a timeless drag-racing platform.
  American filmmaker Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt worked on the movie for three years, riding with the Havana drivers in their '51 Fords and '55 Chevys as they set up clandestine races and later turning to crowdfunding for the cash to complete his project. Playboy (yes, Playboy) has a good read on the film.
   Does the arrival of drag racing signal some revised thinking that could bring more motorsports in Cuba? Probably not. More likely it's just something that slipped past the notice of the sociocultural gatekeepers, fed by an abundance of the type of cars that made this heads-up, straight-line racing popular in its beginnings and requiring little more than two vehicles, two drivers and a quarter mile or so of flat pavement.
   One thing, though, is certain.
   No one could call drag racing bourgeois.

Traction bars, Mickey Thompson slicks help this '55 Chevy hardtop connect with the asphalt.

Photos by Casey Strong, havanadiscoverytours.com. Used by permission.

See also: All Hail the Tri-Fives




Motorcycle racing on the Malecón

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Sportbikes sweep through the course along the Havana waterfront.
   THE-STATE-APPROVED drag-racing events described here recently weren't the first time Cuba has broken its own ban on organized motorsports.
   In 2004, the government allowed motorcycle races on a closed circuit on Havana's Malecón, the same waterfront avenue that was the site of the Cuban Grand Prix in 1957 and 1958. CARISTAS contributor Tony Robertson was at the races and took the photos you see here.
   Several large-displacement bikes took to the course in what may have been a demonstration event for the Caribbean Motor Racing Championship. Running in their own class were smaller-displacement Cuban motorcycles, many with modifications suggesting they were part of some regular, if little-publicized, local racing series.


Bigger motorcycles may have come from the
Carribean Motor Racing Championship.




A Cuban entry passes the Monument to the Victims of the USS Maine.




Photos by Tony Robertson. Used by permission.





Race day images

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A FEW MORE of Tony Robertson's photos from the Havana motorcycle racing event described in the previous post.

RUNNING LEAN: German-built MZ 125-cc carries not a gram of excess weight.

TWO TO SIPHON: Crew members get fuel flowing.

BUMP START: A push, and he's on his way.


BUILT FOR SPEED: Fairing on MZ 250 appears to have been handcrafted.





Photos by Tony Robertson. Used by permission. 




Low-key in 1957, highly noticeable now

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Oldsmobile called its four-door hardtop the Holiday Sedan.
   THE 1957 OLDSMOBILE was said to have restrained styling, at least in comparison to sister General Motors divisions Pontiac, Buick and Chevrolet.
   Today, though, few would consider the '57 Oldsmobile, with its big, jet-age badge and heavy chrome "Hi-Lo Bumper," as understated.
   It's hard to tell whether this Olds is a Golden Rocket 88 (the base model, if you can believe it) or the one-level-up Super 88. We can, however, identify it as a Holiday Sedan, which was Oldsmobile's name for a four-door hardtop.
   Oldsmobile was celebrating its 60th anniversary the year this car was built. The marque was phased out in 2004, and Oldsmobiles are becoming a less common sight in North America.
   They're still highly visible in Cuba.




See also: 1957 Oldsmobile Golden Rocket 88 4-door Sedan



Waiting for nothing to happen

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Goat stands guard at la Iglesia de San Juan Bautista e Inmaculada Concepción in Jaruco.
   CUBA SHOULD be humming.
   Tourism up 20 per cent; Havana hotels bursting.
   Air BnB representatives signing up casas particulares from one end of the island to the other.
   Cuba off the U.S. terrorism list. Cuba on the invite list for the Summit of the Americas.
   So why, as I push against the warm west wind, is the only buzz I detect coming from the tiny engine of my Chinese-made scooter?
   Cuba, at least inland Cuba, has never seemed so quiet.
I'm not the only one to notice this. "Even more than before, the roads were pretty deserted," Ralphee of CubanClassics wrote of his recent visit.
   The world's excitement at the prospect of "normalized" relations between Cuba and its northern neighbour – a strange term, when you think about it – does not seem to have penetrated to the interior of the island.
   Nor, from what I can see, have the loosened restrictions on private enterprise ordered by Raúl Castro in the hope of bringing some life to Cuba's dragging economy. The one business that perhaps has resulted from the reforms is a shop selling plastic and ceramic figures from a porch in the village of Aguacate.
  
Cartoon figures and Santeria stand-ins at a ceramics shop.
   I look over the cartoonish kittens and ducks, the sculptures of saints that represent Santeria spirits, and pay two CUC for a set of espresso cups. The proprietor, an affable man in a stained blue shirt, tells me they were fired from a special clay from the Isla de la Juventad. As he speaks in rapid Spanish to a friend I pick out "yuma," the Cuban nickname for norteamericanos.
   It is another curious term, said to be rooted in "yunay," for united, and in the Cuban's love of the 1957 movie 3:10 to Yuma.

The shopkeeper and his friends in Aguacate.
   On one road, I pass a man sliding along the shoulder on a tractor tire attached by a long rope to an ox. Elsewhere, people sit quietly in the shade, like the three shirtless men I encounter sipping home brew from plastic cups in the town now named Camilo Cienfuegos, but still known to all as Hershey.
   Milton Hershey, the man who gave the world the chocolate bar that bears his name, built this model town early in the 20th century for workers at his sugar mills. By the 1940s his Cuban empire has grown to peanut oil and henequen plants, four electric plants, a 251-mile electric railroad and 60,000 acres of land. The holdings were sold to the Cuban Atlantic Sugar Co. in 1946, a year after Hershey's death, and passed into government control after the revolution.
   Today's Milton Hersheys look at Cuba and envision their own empires in telecommunications, construction or financial services. Perhaps they need to ride a scooter through the torpor of the countryside to understand how slowly change comes to Cuba, if it comes at all.
   That is not, of course, the message the government has for the world. Cuba's foreign trade and investment minister, Rodrigo Malmierca Díaz has spoken repeatedly about the $8.7 billion U.S. the island hopes to attract in foreign investment. But note, investors, his further explanation that the money is sought "to assist Cuba in the construction of a socialist society"
  a clear signal that the Caribbean nation will not relinquish state control of the economy in exchange for foreign cash, just as Castro's moderate reforms were aimed not at changing the Cuban system but at corralling the underground economy that threatened it.

Milton Hershey built this housing compound for workers at his sugar mills.
   Days later at the Varadero airport, I finally see activity. Bus after Chinese-built bus swings up to the newly expanded terminal to disgorge sun-blotched Canadians and Europeans and collect their pasty replacements. Tourism, already a mainstay of the economy, is meant to take on an even larger role, with new hotels and marinas and golf courses, paid for by foreigners, controlled by Cuba through joint operating agreements, rising to serve a soon-to-swell market as the U.S. restrictions ease.
   And if those visitors stay at their seaside resorts and casas but for a day trip to swim with the dolphins or stroll through Old Havana, and never breach the solitude of the inner island, that will hardly upset the architects of a new Cuba that will be very much like the current one.
   After days of heat it begins to rain, and two men in uniform hurry from the airport to take down the huge Cuban flag in the parking lot before it can get wet – another signal, if we need it, of a country's resolve to chart its destiny by preserving its identity.







I rented a scooter. You should find a safer way to get around

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The SYM Jet 4R from Taiwan's Sanyang Motor Co: Never judge a brand by a rental.

  IT WAS THE English scholar John Selden, who might have been a fine blogger had the Internet been around in the 17th century, who coined the expression "Do as I say, not as I do."
   Selden was taking a dig at the church, but his phrase has found equal application over the years to politicians, parents, teachers and other hypocrites, myself now included.
   That last post about riding a scooter through Cuba? Don't you do that. Really, it's too dangerous.
   Yes, the pace of driving in Cuba is generally relaxed. But as often been discussed here, the poor condition of roads and vehicles and the often severe consequences for those involved in accidents still make it a risky place to motor.
   Better to hire a car and driver – often cheaper than a rental car – or, if you must drive, surround yourself with some serious steel.
   If I can offer a defence, it's that I knew most of my travels would be on quiet inland roads. I barely saw any other traffic. Only once, riding (by necessity) through the skinny streets of Matanzas, did I feel squeezed by fellow road users.
   But Matanzas is a port. Drivers in ports are always aggressive, right?



Not made for leaded gas, but apparently often fed it.
   So how, you ask, purely from curiosity, and not, of course, from any intention to actually rent a scooter yourself, was my two-wheeler?
   Atrocious.
   With a 50-cc four-stroke engine that looked to have been lifted from a WeedWhacker, it was challenged by every hill and headwind. Yet despite its wee motor, the the SYM Jet 4R sucked gas like a Harley.
   It sputtered at startup. It buzzed. It pulled to the right when I hit the brakes. Which is really weird, for a motorcycle. (Pulling to the left would be weird too.)
   But you can't judge a brand by a rental, especially a high-mileage example like the one I had.
   SYM, or Sanyang Motor Co. of Taiwan (not China – I was wrong about that in my last post), is actually well-regarded as a scooter builder, and ranked several levels above its Chinese competitors. And like all modern manufacturers, its products are designed to run on unleaded gasoline.
   My scooter, I'm sure, had been fed plenty of the leaded gas still used in the majority of Cuba's gas-powered vehicles. That would explain its clogged-up engine. In Madruga, running on fumes, I couldn't find a station offering "especial" gasoline, i.e. unleaded, and had to put in leaded fuel. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed to run better after that.



Mishozuki says it's "made for Japan.' It's made IN China.
  I saw many other scooters on the road, most of them battery-powered models whose owners had no need to seek out gas stations. These electric scooters aren't very quick, and their range is limited to perhaps 35 kilometres, even on a full overnight charge. Plus in Cuba, where almost all power is generated by burning fossil fuels, they offer no real environmental benefit.
   But for Cuban citizens, who know all too well the frustrations of government paperwork, electric scooters have one key advantage: neither machine nor operator needs to be licensed.
   I'd try an electric scooter in Cuba, should I find one available as a rental.
  Don't you, though.

Electric scooters don't require licences, a prime attraction for Cubans.



Spoiler alert

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Because you can never have too much downforce?


Governor de Soto, your taxi is here

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Export-model DeSoto is based on a Plymouth – with an added bit of Dodge.
   HERNANDO DE SOTO was appointed governor of Cuba in 1538 but spent just 11 months on the island before leading his expedition into what now is the United States, where he hoped to find gold and instead would encounter hostile natives and eventually the illness – recorded only as "a fever"– to which he would succumb.
   But de Soto's name lives on in Cuba. His image, too, if the stylized conquistador in the logo of the Chrysler DeSoto (sometimes De Soto) bears any likeness to the Spanish explorer.
 

Both DeSoto and Plymouth emblems were applied at the factory.




    DeSoto was a separate line for Chrysler from 1928 to 1961, generally positioned above its mainstream brands but a notch or two below its luxury divisions. For much of that period the Detroit automaker also produced an export-model DeSoto, based on cars from Plymouth or Dodge and usually called the Diplomat.
   Most of Cuba's DeSotos are of the export variety, like this 1948 sedan from the government's Gran Car fleet of tourist-pleasing taxis. It bears both DeSoto and Plymouth badges – it came that way – but even without them, its Plymouth heritage shows through in the blocky fenders and other conservative lines.
 

Gran Car taxi fleet ferries visitors in eye-catching classics.
  The waterfall grille, however, offers at least a nod to its more stylish home-market cousin, even if the signal lights to each side came from the Dodge parts bin. (Chrysler was ever-inventive in its configurations.)
  The export DeSoto was also sold in Australia, Europe, Mexico and South America, though few will remain in those markets. On the island once governed by its namesake, however, it still rules the roads.



See also: 


Hemmings: Made for export – 1947 De Soto


Allpar: The DeSoto Diplomat




DeSoto Diplomacy

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Havana mystery-mobile – a Mercury, maybe?
   I was puzzled when I came across this chrome-toothed cruiser during one of my first trips to Cuba. The grille seemed vaguely Mercury, but the body lines, and especially the bump-out behind the back wheel, said Plymouth.
    Some type of amalgamation? Yes, I eventually learned, but one that came that way as a DeSoto Diplomat, an export model that was mainly a Plymouth with a front-end treatment from Chrysler's pricier DeSoto line.
  This one is a '55. It may be missing a few trim pieces, but hey  it still has all its teeth.




See also:


Governor de Soto, your taxi is here




The rest of the Subie

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The 1992-1998 Subaru Vivio remains popular in Cuba.
   THAT GIANT WING of a few posts back is bolted to a very small platform – a Subaru Vivio of the Japanese Kei microcar category.
   Subaru built the Vivio from 1992 to 1998, primarily for its home market and Europe. A good number of Vivios, however, found their way to Cuba, where they continue to command strong prices on sites such as cubisima.com.
   The Vivio came in three- and five-door models with front- or all-wheel-drive and a 660-cc four-cylinder engine rated at 54 horsepower (a 64-h.p. turbo version was available in Japan). That's not much power, but apparently quite sufficient to propel a car with a listed weight – sans spoiler, no doubt – of just 645 kilograms.


Vivio came in five-door, above, and three-door models.



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