History beckons in vintage car ride on Havana’s streets

Sujoy Dhar

As the 45-minute flight from Miami ended at the spartan Havana airport earlier this year, I could see I was in a country like no other. The no-frills airport resembled some of our own in tier-II or tier-III cities before the makeovers happened.

As I came out of the airport and exchanged some currencies (Cuban peso), I found no signs of a swanky modern airport complex, common anywhere else in the world now. What awaited me over the next few hours were some show-stoppers which we only see during the vintage car rallies in India.

Though this is Havana 2023, anybody can feel like a time traveller here. Forming a sizable percentage of the city’s vehicle force for urban transit, the old pre-1960 American cars are vying cheek by jowl in the Cuban capital along with those imported after 2016.

For most of the present generations of Indians, even those in their 50s, a sight of so many of them on the road is only a reel of nostalgia from the movies of 1950s and ’60s.

Cubans have preserved these old cars immaculately, though not exactly by choice. The mechanical wizardry of the people is real but those familiar with Cuba’s geo-political history (of defying the US and cosying up to the erstwhile USSR) since the communist takeover of the country by Fidel Castro in 1959, are aware that necessity is the mother of this need for preservation and improvisation.

No American car was allowed to be imported by Cuba after 1959 following the trade embargo by the US. For nearly six decades, Cuba’s automobile scene was frozen in time, till things changed in 2016, a year after the US-Cuba diplomatic ties were restored. So, the streets of Cuba still have some 60,000 vintage cars. Chevrolet, Ford, Chrysler, Studebaker, Oldsmobile, Plymouths, Buick, you name it and they have it. These could be privately owned, or your regular cabs and are also offered to the tourists for classic convertible fun rides.

The early 1950s’ Chevys are the most common in Cuba, while you can also spot the majestic Cadillacs of that era.

In 2016, Nissan’s Vice President of Global Design, Alfonso Albaisa, introduced the first American-made car to Cuba in about six decades.

When President Barack Obama decided to go soft on Cuba, relaxing the strictures placed by President Dwight Eisenhower, restoring diplomatic ties in 2015 and following up with his visit to Cuba the next year, things began to change as new car sales restarted in 2016-17.

However, an economically impoverished Cuba continues to keep its old cars in an up-and-running condition.

The cars apart, in Havana, do not miss a visit to its beaches. Playas del Este is a coconut and palm tree-lined strip of white sand and clear blue water. The beaches are less than half an hour away by a vehicle (18 km from city central), and are not overcrowded. The best way to reach is to avail the Transtur buses. Whether you are in old Havana or Central Havana, just walk to the bus stop in front of Central Park (Parque Central) and buy an affordable ride to the beach.

The evenings in Havana are all about exploring its pubs with extended outdoor seating, many of them in old houses. Go bar-hopping and enjoy some great live music and dance since Cuba is the powerhouse of Latin music. From Afro-Cuban jazz to trova, boleros and rock ’n’ roll to rhumba, salsa, soukous, good music is assured.

Besides Cuba’s famous handmade cigars and footprints of an Ernest Hemingway fishing in his boat, tourists will find people in this impoverished country accosting them for money or to sell old records or even ask for old clothes, but they are never violent or even close to being so.

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