Andrew McLeod. (amcleod@scotsman.com). The Scotsman. May 18, 2001.
IT WAS no mean feat: Pack three small kids in the back seat and drive from Toronto to Havana (and keep your sanity: "Are we nearly there yet?")
The year was 1956 and there was no in-cabin entertainment other than a radio so there were lots of stops for a game of horse-shoes, but the roads were emptier then and our car was a roomy two-toned navy blue, white-roofed ’53 Chevy Bel-Air (body by Fisher). It was a cool machine long before
the word came into fashion, and we were heading for an island in the throes of a revolution (though my parents probably didn’t know it at the time, parochial as the Canadian press was then).
US Route 1 down the east coast stretches 2,450 miles from Maine to the tip of Florida. That’s the route we took and it was a spectacular drive along the long string of bridges (including what is now known as Old Seven Mile Bridge) to Key West, where the ferry that used to ply between the US
and Havana awaited us.
Sailing into Havana with its famous Morro Castle landmark was a stunning experience I haven’t forgotten - and one not many have witnessed since the ferry service ended after the revolution. And Robert Redford got it right when he conjured the revolutionary atmosphere of smoke-filled casinos
and Cuba Libres in his excellent film Havana.
But at age six, it wasn’t the maracas in the wood-pannelled bar at the Mafia-infested Hotel Nacional that dazzled me - it was the American cars in the streets.
Canada was OK for cars, but our Chevy was only a ’53 and in Havana there seemed to be so many late models. There was an affluence there and wealthy Cubans liked to flaunt it with their flashy Buicks, Cadillacs and Plymouths, all of which had begun to sprout fins in ’56.
Over the next three years, as Fidel Castro’s guerrilla war reached its climax with a fully-fledged revolution, those fins, developing like a young girl’s breasts, would evolve into the sexiest flourish of automotive design the world had ever seen.
Each October, when the new models appeared, Life and other US magazines (available at our local Minimax supermarket) would carry spreads of all the latest cars, hailing the dramatic innovations in US car design. In tandem with that publicity - with perfect timing - toy manufacturers Revell would
launch brilliantly-detailed scale models with all the style updates.
And these were also immediately available in Havana toy shops. I still have my collection.
Many US brands had begun to flounder or were discontinued during the years of the Cuban revolution - Frazer, Kaiser, Nash, Hudson, Packard. Even so, it was a time of excess and in Havana there was a plethora of cars with fanciful names, some still in use today, though not necessarily used in the
same guise: Chevrolet Bel-Air and Impala; Ford Galaxy; Buick Century, Invicta and Electra; Pontiac Star Chief and Bonneville; Plymouth Fury and Ford Motor Company’s celebrated flop, the Edsel, with its trademark gaping, open-mouthed grille.
As if that wasn’t enough to lure the average punter, the cars were equipped with Super-Matic, Ultramatic, Hydra-Matic, Futuramic, Hurricane Power, Powerglide, Touch-Down Overdrive. Some had Sea-Tint windows.
Parked in the carport of his mother’s house, around the corner from where we lived in the Havana suburb of Tarará, was Fidelito Castro’s Willys Jeep, painted in the red and black colours of the "26 de Julio" revolution, a gift - believe it or not - from a
still-friendly US government to the new Cuban leader’s son.
A family friend from Spain, who usually drove a small, boxy Nash Metropolitan - the only American car to steer clear of fins, perhaps for the good reason that the US design was built in England by Austin - occasionally succumbed to temptation and would hire a top-of-the range Buick Century. The
blindingly white Century he drove was lavishly embellished with chrome, with deep blue plastic-covered interior and an air-conditioning system like a fridge to protect you from the blistering Cuban heat.
It had enormous fins and, even in those days, the Century was equipped with automatic seats, windows and power steering.
By 1959, the window space on GM’s new generation of Wide-Track cars (more a style thing than engineering feat) had become vast. In the ergonomic disaster that was the ’59 Chevy, you sat a back-breaking few inches off the floor; its dashboard was an array of pods first seen in the
Corvette, its wide-finned rear with elliptical tail-lights prompting a cartoon in the Reader’s Digest: "Mom, come quick, something’s eaten my bicycle!"
When the time came to trade in the Bel-Air, I had my heart set on a 1958 Chevy Nomad station wagon, but Dad turned a deaf ear and opted for a (cheaper and smaller) Vauxhall Velox, new for that model year. Parent company General Motors had endowed it with - you guessed it - fins, so that it
resembled other models in the GM stable. It proved to be a rust bucket in the salty Gulf climate, but it was stylish, admirable in many other ways, and was often taken for a Chevy: "Es el nuevo Chevrolet?" (is it the new Chevrolet?) "gas station" attendants would ask.
Small wonder, then, that Cubans became fascinated by these monstrosities from their northern neighbours, soon to become the enemy and referred to as La Mafia del Norte. To a large extent, with their revolution Fidel Castro and Che Guevara threw out the baby with the bathwater and the US Mafia,
but parting with fins and chrome was not easy. For one thing, what would they drive?
But there was, I feel now, more to it than that. It has proved an enduring love affair and Cubans are clearly still proud of their American monsters.
Returning recently to Cuba for the first time since we left in December 1959, I came across a good example of a pillarless, 1958 Chevy, the car I had begged my dad to buy. Lounging in the doorway of his shop, the car’s latest owner noticed my interest. "Está en muy buen estado,
te felicito (it’s in great shape, congratulations)," I said. He grinned and replied: "Te lo vendo (I’ll sell it to you)."
That was cruel and I left Cuba again, empty-handed, still yearning. | 