Cuba Chrome: Should be real interesting TV

July 9, 2015, 9:09 am

According to its badge, this 1949-1952 Oldsmobile has Nissan ingredients.

I can't wait to watch Cuba Chrome, the new reality television series about Cuba's famous classic cars and the struggles of their owners to keep them running.

And not just for the cars – though undoubtedly, we'll see many interesting vehicles in the series that debuts on Discovery on July 13. A video by Pilgrim Studios, the creator of Cuba Chrome, offers an enticing advance look.

What promises to be just as intriguing, though, is the application of the "reality TV" concept – already laughable, in most cases – to a place where reality is notoriously pliable. There will be stories, many stories. All will be entertaining, and some might even be true.

This will be a treat.

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A Gullwing for the gullible

July 26, 2015, 8:58 am

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THE STORY OF Cuba's decaying old Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing Coupe lives on. For the latest chapter, we can thank a New Hampshire prankster who last week listed the Gullwing for sale on Craiglist.
Under the heading "Attention scrappers," the purported vendor wrote: "I have a rusty old Mercedes to get rid of. No engine, Has doors that open to the top. Glass is good."
And just to make sure his ad got noticed, the prankster tossed in a photo of the Cuban Gullwing taken several years ago by British writer Michael E. Ware.
Though taken down almost immediately, the listing still caught the attention of BarnFinds.com, which looked at the offer with equal parts suspicion and wistfulness. "If this is the real deal, it would be the find of the century!" said the website.
Sorry, BarnFinds, but you were right to be sceptical.

University of Miami Libraries. Cuban Heritage Collection,
Ramiro A. Fernández Collection

A couple of other Gullwing notes:

• What might be the Cuban 300SL in its early years can be seen in a photo of a 1950s-era Havana road race that is part of the University of Miami's Cuban Heritage Collection. In the shot, the two-tone No. 24 Mercedes coupe is drifting around a corner ahead of an Austin Healey. At least two Gullwings are known to have raced in Cuba: one, driven by Modesto Bolanos, bore the name of its sponsor, tobacco maker Trinidad Y Hermano; the other – this one? – was driven by Santiago “Chaquito” González.

• According to a post I read on a forum (sorry, but I've lost the link), someone inspected the Cuban Gullwing and reported that it has been stripped of all its manufacturer's identification numbers. If that's true, it means there could be a bogus 300SL out there somewhere, assembled from spare parts and fabricated bits and registered under the Cuban car's VIN. I bet it's in New Hampshire.

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U.S. shows colours, Cuba shows cars

August 14, 2015, 8:22 pm

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Havana's former flag thicket. Wikipedia photo by Angelo Lucia.

Not so long ago, the plaza separating what was then the U.S. Interests Section building in Havana from the Malecón waterfront boulevard was home to a forest of Cuban flags – part of the long-running propaganda war between Cuba and the United States.
Today, the plaza's flagpoles stood bare, allowing a unimpeded view of the ceremony to raise the Stars and Stripes outside the newly reopened U.S. embassy.
The now-clear sightlines had an additional purpose.
Perfectly positioned on the Malecón to appear in the camera shots behind U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was a trio of handsome old Chevrolets: a two-tone '55 sedan, a black '59 Impala four-door and the king of classics – a red '57 Bel Air convertible.
The message? American tourists, your rides await.

Old Glory and old glories, as captured in a video by CCTV America and posted on YouTube.

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Nomad on an island

August 29, 2015, 4:21 pm

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Rare sight: A 1955 Chevrolet Nomad two-door wagon

SOME TIME back, CARISTAS reader Paul voiced a hope that any Chevrolet Nomad in Cuba had not been irreversibly altered, and I realized that I had never come across one of Chevy's delightful two-door station wagons on the island.

This was surprising, given the presence in Cuba of late-1950s Corvettes, Continental Mark IIs and other classics produced in far fewer numbers than the 22,000 Nomads built between 1955 and '57.
Surprising too in that station wagons would appear to have sold well in Cuba in the '50s, though perhaps Cuban wagon buyers, even more than their U.S. counterparts, valued utility over style.
Then, riding on a bus through Matanzas – one of my favourite car-spotting locales – I glimpsed a gold-over-copper '55 Nomad at a traffic light. My camera was in video mode and I wasted time switching to the photo setting, and as a result didn't get a good shot in either mode.
Still, the images I did capture suggest the Matanzas Nomad remains largely stock, 60 years after it arrived in Cuba. Paul in particular will be pleased.

Wheels are from the aftermarket, but the rest of the Nomad looks to be original.

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Taking a shine to Cuban Chrome – scripts and all

September 24, 2015, 8:07 pm

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Central casting: Demetrio Montalvo with sons Michel, left, and Hernan and the family's 1953 Oldsmobile taxi. Photos courtesy of Discovery Communications.

WE ALL understand that "reality show" is an oxymoron. Beyond the obvious effect of observation on the behaviour of the subject, there's the need – fed by the shortness of our attention spans – for every moment of these television programs to be interesting, even if real life doesn't work that way.

The consequence, then, are shows that range from the selective – edited reality, which we're usually willing to accept – to the staged and scripted, which we're unlikely to believe but still watch if they are unceasingly entertaining.
Cuban Chrome, the eight-part series that ran on Discovery in the U.S. this summer and now is airing in Canada, falls into the staged-and-scripted category. The premise – three Habaneros rushing to restore their classic vehicles in time for the one day a year a prestigious car club accepts new members – seems unlikely, at least without an ample supply of grease from the production company.
Some of the supposedly ordinary types who appear in Cuban Chrome are equally suspect. Demetrio Montalvo, who we're told is a taxi driver working to feed his family, emotes like a Barrymore as he describes the struggle to get his '53 Oldsmobile back on the road – and indeed, we see an actor by Montalvo's name listed in the cast of the 2014 French science fiction film Habana.
Then there's Roberto Ordaz, an "apprentice mechanic" with remarkably clean fingernails, probably because his chief job, suggests the Washington Post's David Montgomery, is "delivering perfectly timed explanations in English of what’s going on and what’s at stake." The Cuban government could not have trained a better tour guide.

Roberto Ordaz and his putative boss, mechanic Fernando Barral.

Yet like a dissident reaching Pope Francis, reality sometimes breaks through. Yes, we see the famous struggle of Cuban vehicle owners to adapt and improvise – if presented more vaguely than a car buff would desire – but we also witness the humour and elaborate courtesy that help the people of this crowded city get through their days. We take in the unspoken but evident tension between a divorced couple over ownership of an inherited Austin-Healey 2+2.
We even hear Roberto tell mother-in-law jokes, a seeming staple of Cuban males and often of the same vintage as their cars (but perhaps just recited to North Americans because they figure we're still big on Henny Youngman).
And then there is the moment the producers could never have anticipated. We see the Cubans' jaws drop as they watch Raúl Castro announce his agreement with Barack Obama to resume diplomatic relations. Real events happen, even on reality TV.

Here's hoping that Discovery renews Cuban Chrome. We can live with the scripted bits when the payoff is more glimpses of Cuban life and Cuban cars – two subjects that will always hold our interest.

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Powered by Volkswagen?

September 28, 2015, 5:19 pm

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A fresh and thoughtful view of Cuba

September 30, 2015, 8:39 pm

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A CONSTANT STREAM of outsiders try to take Cuba's measure. Few succeed. An island that sets communism to a Latin beat is no easy place to figure out – especially when the island itself is adjusting to a renewed bond with a powerful neighbour.

One who would appear to understand Cuba, however, is Anthony Bourdain, star of CNN's Parts Unknown food and travel program. In the premier episode of the sixth season, the urbane host visits Havana and Santiago, sampling dishes that will make your mouth water even as he engages Cubans from all walks on their hopes and fears.
Some of us interpret Cuba by its cars. For Bourdain, a chef before all else, the measure, of course, is food, and the arrival of sushi alongside the beans and rice is a potent symbol of the nation's change. Still, the meals are merely an entry point to a broader examination of history and culture that speaks to painstaking research by the host and production company.
Bourdain's take on Cuba and its nervous excitement as it tries to both reshape itself and not reshape itself? Well, it's complicated.
"Everybody knows, everyone can feel it ... it smells like freedom," he muses.
"But will it be victory?"

See the full episode at the CNNgo website.

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Not so fearsome fins

October 11, 2015, 10:37 am

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Export-model 1957 Dodge makes a dramatic parting statement.

FINS – THE KIND that are attached to sharks – have been sighted in nervous-making numbers this year in places like California, Australia and South Africa.

Fins – the kind that are attached to cars – are always seen in quantity in Cuba, where they induce a much more positive reaction, at least among visitors (the locals just yawn).
The impressive examples shown here were observed on a 1957 sedan of the exportus plodgis strain, meaning it's a Plymouth-Dodge amalgam built by Chrysler for non-U.S. markets.
Inspired by the Jet Age, the automotive tailfin craze peaked with the enormous rear protrusions of the 1959 Cadillac (non loquuntur dorsum). But if General Motors won the battle in height, Chrysler led in variety, with designs like the emphatic pillars above, the delicate "floating taillights" of the 1955 Imperial (luxuria rex) and any number of intricate offerings in between.
Look long enough in Cuba, and you should come across every style of tailfin. And yes, that includes the alarming, attached-to-a-shark type (caramba maximus). Generally, those ones are well offshore, but still reason enough for some of us to restrict our fin-spotting to the streets.

For sale, impressive tailfins included.

See also:

The Tailfin: American Automobile Design At Its Finest

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More smart than sporty, but it IS a Suburban

October 25, 2015, 5:15 pm

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Badging, intricate trim proclaim this wagon's top-of-the-line status.

HERE'S ANOTHER confuser from Chrysler.
First, the Sport Suburban script on the side of this station wagon could surprise anyone who associates the Suburban name only with Chevrolet trucks. In fact, "suburban" began as a generic description for light commercial vehicles with extra seats and a closed cargo area, and has been applied to models from Studebaker, Nash, DeSoto, Plymouth, Dodge and GMC as well as Chevy (where it's been in continuous use since 1935).
The Sport part is harder to explain. The Sport Suburban was Plymouth's top-line wagon in 1956, with a newly available 277-cubic-inch V-8 but no particular performance-oriented equipment that I know of, unless you count the "Sportspun Tweed" upholstery with metallic threads.

Plymouth wagon wears its Dodge front styling well.

Though nicely proportioned, it looked less sporty, in fact, than Plymouth's lower-level Custom and Deluxe Suburban two-door wagons.

The final puzzle is the Dodge nose on what is otherwise a Plymouth. Chrysler buffs, however, will recognize this immediately as one of the automaker's "Plodge" export vehicles, usually assembled in Canada and meant as lower-priced entry models for Dodge and DeSoto dealers.
Compared to the angular and rather dated front ends on home-market Plymouths in 1956, the more rounded Dodge treatment is an improvement for the Sport Suburban, providing this smart-looking wagon with a handsome face.
That's worth a little confusion.

See also:

Allpar: Plymouth cars of 1956

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Scene 1, Type 2

October 31, 2015, 3:48 pm

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Caught on camera: a first-series Volkswagen Type 2 Deluxe Bus.

SO TAKEN was I with the Sport Suburban of the previous post, I didn't realize until checking my photos that I had also captured a first-generation Volkswagen Type 2 van, or bus.

When I was young, the Type 2 (the Beetle was VW's Type 1 model, of course) was a regular sight. As a cargo hauler that could double as the family car, it offered compelling value to those willing to accept acceleration as slow as a Bavarian boat ride and the general stigma of owning an odd foreign bus-truck thing.
I remember my father muttering when we would be caught in a line of cars behind one clattering up a hill. It's a wonder that the signs for the passing lanes finally introduced on the Trans-Canada Highway didn't bear an icon of a Volkswagen bus.

Wikipedia photo.

The Type 2 came in numerous versions including a pickup, a rusty example of which ran into the back of our 1963 Mercury Meteor at a stop sign. My mother was at the wheel, learning to drive, with my father next to her. I was in the back seat. No one was injured, but the driver's-side door of the Volkswagen fell off.

It turned out that my parents knew the driver – our town was pretty small – and after some discussion we all drove away, the door now in the VW's cargo bed.
Unmistakable for its deep-V, plunging-neckline front end that wears a huge VW emblem like a medallion, the first-series Type 2 was made in Germany from 1950 until 1967 and in Brazil from 1957 to as late as 1975. The one I photographed, which carries the logo of the state-owned Transtur company, is, I think, a Brazil-built Deluxe Bus. Note the bustle for added luggage capacity.
Volkswagen Beetles are everywhere in Cuba; their van sister-models are much less common.
Or maybe I'm just not noticing them.

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Date the Beetles

November 7, 2015, 8:45 pm

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Turn signals atop the fenders probably identify this Matanzas gold Bug as a pre-1975 model.

VOLKSWAGEN Beetles, as mentioned, are plentiful in Cuba (as they are in many countries). I'm thinking the Beetles, or VW Type 1s, I've come across on the island are all from the 1970s, but as to their specific years, or place of origin, I can't be sure. Any experts care to weigh in?

Look past the smart graphics, and this VW is a puzzler. Most of the body appears to be from the 1965-and-later series, but the doors have the thicker posts of earlier Beetles. Perhaps the doors came from Brazil, where the older body style was retained through at least 1973.

Decklid vent pattern allows us to narrow the year of this Beetle to '70 or '71.

At least for Beetles sold in Europe and North America, the signal lamps moved to the front bumper in 1975.

Another puzzler, with turn signals in the bumper AND on the fenders. And here again, the doors appear to be lifted from a different body series.

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Angle parking only

November 15, 2015, 5:47 pm

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Two-wheeled horse carts at rest on a quiet afternoon (i.e., pretty much any afternoon) in Aguacate, an agriculture centre 80 kilometres west of Havana.

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More images from the 'Jurassic Park for car lovers'

November 22, 2015, 5:21 pm

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Ford meets Chevy in a scene from photographer Piotr Degler's Cuba collection.

PIOTR DEGLER was the talk of the automotive Internet last year for his photos of a Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing Coupe rotting beneath a banana tree near Havana.
But the neglected-beyond-repair Mercedes was far from the only subject for the car photographer from Spain and Italy. Degler, who like so many others had concluded that he should not delay if he wanted to see the island before it forever changes, spent a month travelling in what he calls "a kind of Jurassic Park for every classic car lover." In Cuba's cities and small towns and countryside he took some 25,000 images, from which he selected just 12 – the Gullwing among them – for the 2015 edition of his premier Degler Calender.
Now the photographer is preparing to show more than 200 other pictures from that visit in a hardcover book called Carros de Cuba. The project is being funded through a Kickstarter campaign that has already raised €13,800 (CDN $19,600) toward a goal of €30,000 (CDN $42,600).

March 2016 is expected publication date after fundraising target is met.

In the images he takes for car magazines, manufacturers and other clients, Degler achieves a studio quality, even when the subject was shot under sun and clouds, not lights and reflectors.

His photos from Cuba are, as he says, more of a documentary style, without manipulation of the scene beforehand or extensive editing later. "The picture," he says, "shows respectfully the reality as it is."
Yet a preview of images for Carros de Cuba reveals the same, studio-like purity of color and pattern, arrayed in deceptively simple compositions that somehow convey complex stories, always built around cars. We see the country that is simultaneously languid and vibrant, ruined and resilient.
Those who look on these and the book's other photos – still just 200 or so, culled from so many thousands – will be glad Degler set out to capture that reality as it is.

Parked: A 1956 or '57 Jaguar Mark 1 with added headlamps.

Photos © Piotr Degler. Used by permission.

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An eye for detail

November 30, 2015, 5:54 pm

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Sunset special: 1959 Chevrolet on Havana's oceanfront boulevard.

Carros de Cubawill be far from the first published collection of Cuban car photos, but it may well be the best-crafted.

Photographer Pietr Degler promises that his book will be printed on high-quality paper on an eight-colour Heidelberg press – which is to offset printing what Mercedes-Benz is to automobiles – and finished in a spot varnish. The hardback cloth cover will have foil stamping.
It's the same attention to detail that Degler brings to his annual automotive-themed calendar and, of course, to his photography.

Caught in a Mercedes 180's crosshairs, cat seems more curious than concerned.

Being able to maintain control over the production is one reason he turned to crowd-funding for the book rather than seeking a traditional publisher, he says.

Another is to keep the price down. A standard book is available for a minimum pledge of €50 (CDN $70.50).
With 45 days to go, his campaign is more than midway to its goal of €30,000.

A '55 Plymouth in mid-repair.

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Where there's no evading the battle with rust

December 7, 2015, 8:30 pm

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In a garage in the town of Aguacate, huge portions of what appears to be an English Ford are being rebuilt with new metal.

I ALWAYSlaugh when I see a TV car restorer in Dallas or Las Vegas open up a project vehicle and complain that it's rustier than expected.

Rust? Here in Canada, we can show you rust.
And in Cuba, too, the chapistas know all about corrosion and its insidious appetite for ferrous metal.
In snowy climes, the liberal spreading of salt on icy roads speeds the electro-chemical process that is rust on any car not tucked away for the winter. In Cuba, where you're never far from the ocean, those same sodium, calcium and magnesium chlorides waft in on the breeze – in smaller quantities, certainly, but just as damaging over the many years of a Cuban car's lifetime.
The TV restorers from Gas Monkey Garage and Count's Kustoms can fix rust, of course. They just don't want to invest the time.
Cuban restorers have no choice.

Alongside the Ford, a Dodge is midway through an engine swap.

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The boss drives a Bel Air

December 9, 2015, 7:49 pm

≫ Next: Latest find in Cuba: a race-prepped Aston Martin

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AT THE VERY back of this body and mechanical shop was the proprietor's own car, a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air sedan undergoing its own slow restoration. No telling how many times it had been rebuilt before, but it looked clean and straight.

The '57 Chevy was available new in several single colours and two-tone combinations, but white-over-orange wasn't one of them.

Doors have had some patching, but dash and floor look sound. Steering wheel and column are newer than the rest of the car — though maybe not by much.

No diesel under this hood. Inside the Chevy's neat engine compartment is a 235-cubic-inch six-cylinder gasoline engine. 'Original,' said the owner.

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Latest find in Cuba: a race-prepped Aston Martin

December 15, 2015, 7:47 pm

≫ Next: The Aston Martin's story, and the probable truth

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ANOTHER RARE and desirable car has surfaced in Cuba – this one a race-prepared Aston Martin DB 2/4.
And unlike Cuba's infamous, rotted-to-ruins Mercedes Gullwing, the 1958 Aston Martin is said to be salvageable, if only barely.

The source of this assessment is none other than premier U.S. restorer Jonathan Ward, who came across the British hatchback – yes, the DB 2/4 is a hatchback – on his first visit to the island (Ward, like so many Americans, wanting to get to Cuba before all the Americans get to Cuba).

Writing at roadandtrack.com, Ward reports riding in a Chaika M14 taxi to a farm an hour outside Havana, where he was shown the Aston Martin resting under a blanket of dust in a shed.

"As our eyes adjusted to the dim cavern, we saw the unmistakable buttocks of a British sport car," he relates. "I immediately knew what we were looking at."
Ward, founder of ICON 4x4, the Los Angeles shop that modernizes old cars and trucks for wealthy enthusiasts like Jay Leno, was disappointed by his next discovery. The Aston Martin's dash, steering column and even its engine had been replaced with parts from a Russian Lada, the ubiquitous Cuban donor car.
Still, "littering the dirt floor" were at least some of the original parts, and Ward tells of his dream of seeing the car restored to compete in a revived Cuban Grand Prix.
If anyone could make at least the first part of that dream happen, it would be Jonathan Ward.

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The Aston Martin's story, and the probable truth

December 20, 2015, 6:04 pm

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A 1957 DB 2/4 similar to the Aston Martin in Cuba. Wikipedia photo.

THOUGHTFUL AND entertaining, Jonathan Ward's account of his foray to Cuba is a happy change from the usual breathless first-timer's report.
He tells of handing out fuses, bulbs and other auto-repair necessities, and helping to fix a taxi radiator hose with a Band-Aid. He describes the progress and decay he sees side by side.
And he shares a revealing remark by a doctor who moonlights as a tricycle taxi operator about the island's dilemma.
"Communism does not work," the doctor tells him, "but capitalism has no conscience."
Yet when it comes to the rare 1958 Aston Martin DB 2/4 he saw in Cuba, Ward reveals a rookie error.
He fell for The Story.
Everything in Cuba has a story – amusing or romantic or poignant or all of these things. Sometimes it is true. Sometimes it is embroidered from a single thread of fact. Sometimes, you suspect, it has been composed on the spot.
Storytelling is part of the Cuban culture, a tradition nourished by decades of sharing word-of-mouth rumours and speculation as antidote to the sanctioned stories of the state media.
The Aston's story, related by a woman who says she is its owner, is that the car was a gift from a "British official" who had to leave unexpectedly and could not export it. Now she was seeking Ward's assessment of the sports car's potential value, presumably to an offshore buyer.
It sounds a bit like the fall of Saigon, the elegant diplomat clinging to a Huey skid and calling, "Cheerio, my dear – enjoy the Aston!"
None of this makes sense. Great Britain never closed its embassy in Cuba, and foreign nationals, envoys or otherwise, have generally found it possible to leave with vehicles they brought to Cuba in the first place.
Much more likely is that the Aston Martin was imported by a rich Cuban business owner to compete in the island's burgeoning car racing scene.
Indeed, an article by Bill Noon for a publication of the Aston Martin Owners Club confirms that an DB 2/4 Mark III with racing-specification, 214-horsepower engine – one of just two cars so produced – was delivered new for entry in the Cuban Grand Prix in October 1958.

Aston Martin DB 2/4 was an early hatchback. Theodulf/Wikipedia.

Left behind in the exodus of wealthy families after the revolution, the Aston would have been seized by the new Marxist government for use by some functionary. We can picture it plodding along the island's rough roads, its temperamental six-cylinder engine with triple Weber carburetors long discarded in favour of a low-horsepower Lada powerplant, even as its value rose by the year in the outside world.
There was a moment in the early 1990s when a collector could have secured this prize. Desperate for cash after the collapse of its longtime benefactor, the Soviet Union, Cuba relaxed its prohibition on vehicle exports, and well-heeled enthusiasts swooped in to grab the very best of Cuba's rolling treasures.
This was the way another Aston Martin, a DB2, found its way to Germany. That car – the story goes – was originally owned by the Bacardi family.

Perhaps the rarer DB 2/4 escaped notice in this period. Or perhaps it did come to the attention of a buyer – our Britisher? – who could not complete the paperwork before Cuba closed the door again on car exports, and left it with a Cuban friend.
If Jonathan Ward suspects any of this alternate history, he doesn't say. What he does share is his conclusion, after his first-time visit, that the Aston Martin and all of Cuba's cars belong in Cuba, and not in the hands of foreign collectors and restorers like himself.
Maybe he didn't fall for The Story after all.

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Another sneak peek at Carros de Cuba

December 27, 2015, 5:32 pm

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WITH 18 days left, the fundraising campaign for Piotr Degler's photo book has attracted €24,800 in pledges, or roughly 83 per cent of its €30,000 target.
Here are more of the images that campaign backers will see in Carros de Cuba.