If I Were A Young Man....

.....I would be moving to Miami and setting up for what may well be the biggest thing to ever hit HAMB'ers and other car collectors. I watched a great show on Cuba's fifties cars on HDNET tonight and was astounded and amazed at the cars and the people that were keeping them running.

All that's well and good, but the kicker was a blurb in today's WSJ speculating that our government may well normalize trade with Cuba before the end of the year. The opportunities to buy and sell cars and parts will even embarrass Craig Jackson!

 

Cuba has declared the old cars a historical heritage or something like that so they can't be exported. Maybe you could buy a timeshare there and buy a car to drive on vaacation? I'd be hoping Cuba will become a market for aftermarket parts, after all, they must be running out of old russian parts to repair the US made automobiles with!
Chris

 

they gotta be rotten

 

A friend of mine went on vacation there and tried to buy some.. let's just say they've seen Barrett Jackson on satelite TV.. They want top dollar for everything.

 

I was told a majority of hand me down old cars there are now diesel engined.. most have very little rust if any..

 

This one could be had cheap,..... but it's under several hundred feet of international water.

 

cubans have so many 50's cars because of the trade embargo
so if they wanna drive they have to restore the older cars..

plus theyre dirt poor just like me..

 

Have you guys ever seen the movie Captain Ron? Remember all the old chevys they had in that movie

 

I read years ago that a lot of those cars had a real mix of mechanical parts installed to keep them going. And by that I mean not the normal mix as we would see it here. The engine and trans might be what ever the owner could find and afford when his engine finally gave up the ghost after being band aided for the past 60 years plus the hand hammered patch panels that may or may not fit well.

 

must be Cuba's equivalent of Columbia's go fast boats

 

Actually if you read the details, "normalized relations" means back to how we dealt with Cuba in the 90s, ie: Bills terms.

I will wait and see what David Burge says...........he tends to have his finger on the pulse.

 

I saw that one a while back. Those guys making that stainless stuff is UNREAL!!! Better craftsmanship than we have here in that department. Maybe because EVERYONE down there appreciates the old cars instead of worrying about emissions and what they can and can't have! But that's politics.

 

Besides, the real money is in hotels and tourism and ALL the big players have plans in place and are lined up to move when that day comes.

 

Screw exporting the cars with 50+ years of daily driver road rash and keep it running on zero budget repairs, export the guys who keep them running and make stuff from scratch, including brake linings.

 

a cool side story... the cuban people in the green chevy truck tried once or twice again to reach the states via car/truck boat. The coast guard sank 'em each time.

So, they came up with a new plan. They took a vacation to central america somewhere and traveled up to mexico... then walked across the border into the usa at the checkpoint.

They were very, very happy to be in America.

shame the coast guard wrecked their truck boat tho'.

-W

 

All of the old cars in Cuba are mobile junk heaps repowered ,in the main with Russian and japanese diesel engines or what ever was scrounged up. If you want to go to a country to buy old cars go to the United States. There are thousands of old cars being exported from there every year.I see dozens of them here for sale all the time .

 

if only they knew all they had to do was say they were mexicans looking for work the first time. coast guard probably would of gave them a free meal, medical care and plane tickets for there 37 cousins.