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WHEN CUBAN CARS WERE NEW
THE IMPORTATION OF NEW CARS SLOWED DRAMATICALLY AFTER THE JANUARY 1, 1959, REVOLUTION. CASTRO IMPOSED A NEARLY 200 PERCENT TAX ON LUXURY ITEMS, WHICH INCLUDED CARS, MEANING A $2,000 VEHICLE NOW COST ALMOST $6,000 TO BUY. THE TOTAL NUMBER OF NORTH AMERICAN NEW CAR SALES IN 1959 WAS 3,264, ABOUT HALF THE NUMBER SOLD THERE ONE YEAR EARLIER. US PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER IMPOSED A BAN ON ALL EXPORTS TO CUBA ON OCTOBER 19, 1960, A POLICY THAT HAS BEEN IN PLACE EVER SINCE.
Cars on display at Havana’s Ambar Motors GM showroom in its heyday. Courtesy General Motors Archives
Some retired General Motors engineer is rolling over in the grave. We saw three Corvairs in Cuba, and all of them were powered by front-engine diesels with rear-wheel drive.
Prior to the embargo, Cuba was the world’s largest importer of American cars. Cuban consumers could buy new vehicles, American and European, at dealerships around Havana and throughout the country. And because Miami was so close—just a ferryboat ride away—some Cubans elected to buy their cars in Florida and bring them back. That all changed on January 1, 1959, when the Castro regime took over power.
“I used to go to Key West once a month,” said our contact Quico. “The last time I was there was in 1959.”
Dealerships, like many other businesses, were taken over by the government and closed because inventory was no longer available. And Cubans were no longer allowed to leave the country to make purchases.
The newest American cars seen driving on Cuban streets today, then, are 1959 models, with a few 1960 models that did squeak into the country—those actually built as early production models. During our most recent trip, we saw three Corvairs (all of which had been converted to front-engine, rear-wheel-drive configuration). Corvairs first appeared as 1960 models, so obviously these cars were shipped to Cuba early in their production cycle.
HAVANA ASSEMBLY LINES
Cuba proved to be such a healthy market for American cars that General Motors actually built a couple of subassembly plants in and around Havana. The Chevrolet plant was just a block from the Malecón.
GM brands Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Buick were shipped in knocked-down form from the United States to Cuba, where local laborers assembled them into running cars, using some local content. Completed cars were then shipped to dealerships around the island to be sold.
“The neighborhood around the assembly plant was called Little Detroit,” said our friend Ivan. This neighborhood was also where many new car dealerships were based.
“The name of the Chevrolet assembly plant was Ambar Motors, which [was named after] the owner, Amadeo Barletta,” said Eduardo Mesejo of the Depósito del Automóvil. Quico once owned and raced a 1957 Chevy that was assembled at Ambar.
“The Buick plant was called Valiant Motors, and the Pontiac plant was Villoldo Motors,” he said. He also told us that in the 1920s and 1930s, Ford also had an assembly plant on the island where Model Ts and Model As were put together from knocked-down parts.
After World War II, Ford’s assembly plant in Jacksonville, Florida, assembled cars for the southern US market, as well as those shipped to Cuba and other Central and South American dealers.
There is no record that European cars were ever assembled in Cuba.
The sky, the ocean, the fence posts, and the landscape provide a lovely color palate to complement this mint-green 1950 Chevy. Merten Snijders/Getty Images
HAVANA’S MEGA-DEALER
As previously mentioned, Ambar Motors (founded in 1948) was owned by Amadeo Barletta, the business name being made of the first letters of his first and last names. Barletta was born in Italy in 1894 but spent his youth in Puerto Rico. As a twenty-six-year-old, he opened the first Chevy dealership in the Dominican Republic in 1920.
In 1939, Barletta was named by Italy’s Benito Mussolini as the ambassador to Cuba. Because Italy and Cuba were not allies, Barletta was expelled from Cuba at the start of World War II.
After the war, however, Barletta came back to Cuba and opened up his dealership in Havana selling Chevrolets, Oldsmobiles, and Cadillacs, as well as Chevy trucks and GM buses. By 1945, Ambar operated more than thirty GM dealerships and sub-dealerships around the country, including ten in Havana alone. The business occupied a modernistic building at the corner of the Malecón and La Rampa, Havana’s main east-west street. The glass showroom displayed cars along two blocks in central Havana. By 1951, Ambar Motors employed more than two hundred employees and sold more than seven thousand vehicles annually.
Ambar Motors had a beautiful showroom that displayed Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, and other GM products. Looking at these Caddys and Oldsmobiles made us wonder whether, sixty years later, we had possibly seen some of the exact same cars driving on Havana streets. Courtesy General Motors Archives
The same building that once housed an Ambar Motors dealership, assembly plant, and parts warehouse today has apartments on the upper stories and retail stores on the street level.
After the revolution, Barletta saw the writing on the wall and realized that his income was in jeopardy, so he left Cuba and moved to the Dominican Republic to run the dealership he began there decades earlier.
Interestingly, for more than twenty years, Ambar Motors has operated three large used-car dealerships in South Florida.
NEW CARS NOW
The streets of Cuba are not only populated with old American cars—there are some new, or at least newer, cars as well. In 2011, President Raül Castro made it legal for Cubans to buy and sell new and used cars for the first time since 1959.
Part of the economic reforms Raül has rolled out since taking over as president of Cuba from his brother, Fidel, who stepped down in 2008, the regulations allowed for the legal “transfer of ownership of vehicles for purchase, sale, or donation among Cubans living on the island or foreigners who are residents of Cuba.”
We saw a couple of new car dealerships during our visit, but they were not very crowded. According to our translator, new car purchases might now be legal, but they are still unaffordable for 99 percent of the population.
“When a 15,000 CUC Chinese car costs 250,000 CUCs, nobody can afford to buy one,” he said.
Our translator told us that Cuban cultural figures—athletes, musicians, and artists—have always been able to buy new cars at much friendlier rates than average citizens.
Bougainvillea grows like a weed and blooms year round all over Cuba. Buena Vista Images/Getty Images
We saw this handsome 1958 Chevrolet Impala convertible along the docks of Havana.