My next door neighbor is Cubano - does that count? He is one the most ingenious and helpful individuals I have ever known. I also love cuban sandwiches
All I am saying is that relations are really relaxing... They have a ton of great old iron there... I wonder if early speed parts were sold there before the revolution... I would go check it out, but I don't have $10K to pay the fine for violating the ban... M-
when i was in cuba, everybody knew what their car was worth in florida, and that's what they wanted for it- unless you wanted a 70'2 or 80's russian car
I think the Cuban mechanical genius is fully occupied just keeping the iron rolling in a country with no parts, no money, no foreign exchange, and no nothing. I read an article somewhere on the early American cars down there and how they are kept moving. Apparently most long ago outlived their original engines, since with no way to buy rings, pistons, bearings and so forth eventually you just run out of metal in there. Newer cars were almost all wretched compacts like Ladas and such, not only useless for most transplant purposes but way too scarce and valuable if running to be parted out. The article said that most of the earlier cars now had six cylinder engines and matching transmissions from Russian military vehicles more or less corresponding to our Dodge weapons carriers. These were simply the only available iron for transplant into full sized cars. Clearly the inventiveness and fabricating skills down there are impressive, but performance isn't much of an option with the available parts. I suspect most of the Cuban oldies will prove nearly worthless to us--the ones that still look OK are thirty-foot cars, held together by six layers of housepaint and with every s**** of trim dented in, all capping off a drivetrain of Soviet discards.
Hell, that has to be the next new trend - HAVANARIFIC(TM) Kustoms... I need to find me a "traditional" Trabi motor for my Caddy... Man I love getting in on the ground floor...
what is left aint worth it.but the talent some guys have aquired making what is there work is astounding.
"the talent some guys have aquired making what is there work is astounding" Yeah--I bet if we sent those guys a good V8 and fifty bucks, they could put one of their hulks on the Moon. They are putting the kind of effort one of us would need to go after a Bonneville record just into keeping an elderly taxi moving. Human determination and the brute endurance of ancient iron at war with the crushing load of insane economics and the collision of bizarre Cold War policies...
A good customer of mine was down there to film a chopper show. He went into a repair shop and spied this guys welding set-up. It was a couple chunks of heavy wire strung from a transformer outside the shop into a bucket of water with 2 welding leads coming out of it!!!!!!
The Jalopy Journal
