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Hemmings Motor News Blog

Hemmings Motor News has been around since 1954. We're proud of our heritage, but we're also more than the Hemmings full of classifieds that your father subscribed to. Aside from new editorial content every month in Hemmings, we have three monthly magazines: Hemmings Muscle Machines, Hemmings Classic Car and Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

While our editors traverse the country to find the best content for those magazines, we find other oddities related to the old-car hobby that we really had no place for - until now. With this blog, we're giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we see and what we do during the course of putting out some of the finest automotive magazines you'll ever read.

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Beyond El Malacon, Part 2 – Gavin’s Cuba holiday

Posted November 02, 2016 9:00 AM by dstrohl
Pathfinder Tags: classic autos Cuba gallery

Continuing our effort to document the old cars of Cuba as they are now, before the country embraces modernization and before the cars themselves break down one last time, we have a collection of photos sent in by Gavin Upstill, known to our commenting public as Gavin in the UK. He writes:

"We holidayed in Cuba earlier this year and can confirm that the old 1950s cars are still very much evident everywhere, but that they will get replaced as time goes by, with most of the survivors being used in the tourist business (according to our guide)."

Most, but not all, and Gavin looked beyond the flashy colors of the taxis and other tourist conveyances to some of the cars, trucks and mix-n-match specials used for everyday transportation on the island.

Hemmings continues its ode to the current generation of classic Cuban cars. Dozens more photos are located on Hemmings Daily.

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#1

Re: Beyond El Malacon, Part 2 – Gavin’s Cuba holiday

11/02/2016 11:26 AM

Maybe they can shoot some 50's era movies down there.

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Re: Beyond El Malacon, Part 2 – Gavin’s Cuba holiday

11/02/2016 6:36 PM

Cuban Graffitti?

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Re: Beyond El Malacon, Part 2 – Gavin’s Cuba holiday

11/03/2016 9:01 AM

If I went to Cuba for a vacation, my last choice would be to transported around in a 1950's era automobile.

Those cars were safe for their time, actually they were not very safe at all.

No seat belts ( like school & tourist busses. ) All steel interiors ( so no matter what you bump into, it hurts. ) No safety glass ( you know what happens when it shatters. )

The funny thing about these cars is the attachment people have with them : In the 1950's, did anyone say to themselves, " I wanna save this clunker so 40 years from now I can drive it around and look cool " (?)

The answer is No, soon as it wore out, or they could afford to buy a new model, they did.

Many of those old cars should be junked, relegated to a museum, operated only on private roads, or there should be a special week or month alloted where they can be driven on public highways.

And the rich can still be allowed to sell them back and forth to each other.

You look at one of those beauties driving down the street, and your first impression is, " cool, sweet, nice, hot, countered by memory, envy, desire, jealousy.

Then as soon as it passes, you smell the scent of oil vapor, unburnt hydrocarbons, and then you say, " boy that thing stinks, I'm glad they don't make them like that anymore, then you have memories of oily streets, roads and driveways, smog so thick (354 days of the year ) you could cut it with a butter knife, memories of news reports telling you to keep the kids indoors because the " index " is too high to play outside.

Ya, buddy.

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