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Cuba-correct Corvette
Interior isn't all stock, but retains flavour of a '50s sports car. More of the story of Esterio Segura's 1954 Chevrolet Corvette has emerged. The car's previous owner, we learn from the Spanish...
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Continental drift: Mark II mysteries
Mark II No. 2784 in Havana. Photo courtesy CubanClassics. Of just 3,000 Continental Mark IIs produced, at least four are believed to have gone to Cuba – a measure of the wealth enjoyed by a privileged...
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Colour coincidence?
Reposted from secretoscuba.cultureforum.net. Photographer unknown. Could the 1950 Buick Super convertible above, overflowing with merrymakers in the time when Havana still celebrated Carnaval, be the...
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Rich relics
A Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost? Reposted from secretoscuba.cultureforum.net Also from the then-and-now file, how about this Rolls-Royce photographed many decades ago in Havana's Cathedral Square? Could...
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Defeat, delayed
Even in Cuba, it is evident that metal is mortal, and that vehicles have finite lives, albeit, on this island, probably much longer lives than their designers and assemblers could ever have...
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Gullwing and a prayer
The 300SL years ago. What does it look like now? Photo: Michael E. Ware In the brave tradition of Spanish adventurers, Miguel Llorente decided to set course for the New World. Already, he has...
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The young man and the 300SL
All photos courtesy of Miguel Llorente, This European Life. Miguel Llorente, as already noted here, has determined that least one of Cuba's rumoured Gullwings is metal, not myth. But not a lot of...
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Starsky, Papa and Hutch
David Soul has had success as pop singer and stage actor. But it's as police detective Kenneth Hutchinson in the cheesy 1970s television drama Starsky and Hutch that he will forever be best known....
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Batista's fleet, and a doomed airliner
From the collection of the Biblioteca Nacional José Marti. A while back, I challenged readers to name the cars lined up behind the 1956 Chevrolet Corvette occupied by Fulgencio Batista and his son...
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When terror took wing, I
Fulgencio Batista seemed relaxed, even carefree, as he posed in his son's sports car for the August 1957 photograph that appears in the previous entry here. But the watchful presence of his...
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When terror took wing, II
Salvage efforts at the crash scene: photo source unknown. When did the airplane first become the tool of terrorists? Some put the date as early as Feb. 21, 1931, when armed Peruvian revolutionaries...
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Singer or Ringer?
"Runs like a sewing machine" is a phrase you don't come across often now, but once was common in the car world. It's a compliment, meaning that an engine is smooth and reliable ... though maybe a...
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Cuba car rental guide: The facts
Mazda? No, Changan Alsvin. Much of what you read on the Internet about renting a car in Cuba is confusing. Some of it is wrong. And some things – like the supposed "Chana Alfwin" – are confusingly...
View ArticleThe Gullwing: Watch it and weep
Miguel Llorente shares this video of his discovery in Cuba:See also:The Young Man and the 300SL
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Fuel for thought
Just flew in from Cuba, and boy, are my knees tired! Legroom, it`s clear, is not a priority on the Boeing 737s operated by CanJet (or is it Sardine-CanJet?). Still, the price was right. As was the...
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Bright soldiers of the Revolution
Batista opponents ferried weapons in this 1948 Pontiac Streamliner Deluxe sedan. Preserved under a thick gloss of paint, the vehicles arrayed at the Granma Memorial provide a full-fendered view of...
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Delivering a different history
Ford COE (cab-over-engine) truck carried rebels to Batista's palace. In "11/22/63," novelist Stephen King explores – at length – the different course history might have taken had Lee Harvey Oswald...
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Don't even think about it
Changing of the guard between the Granma Memorial and the Museo de la Revolución. The reverence in which Cuba's leaders hold the artifacts of their long-ago struggle – the cars, the planes, the boat...
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No wonder they won the war
Baby blue: Fidel Castro's Land Rover Series 1 at the Granma Memorial. Sturdy four-wheel-drive trucks from three nations – and three continents – carried Cuba's revolutionary commanders in their...
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A poet soldier and a magic Jeep
One of two CJ's identified as Juan Almeida Bosque's wartime Jeep. Jeeps, we know, can do pretty much anything, but until now, I didn't realize that a single Jeep could appear in two places at once....
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