INTRODUCTION

TOM COTTER

I’ve always wanted to travel back in time rather than forward—perhaps it’s because I’m more intrigued with history than the future. So in 2009, when my friend Bill Warner invited me to join him on an old car tour to Cuba to research the Cuban Grands Prix, I jumped at the offer to step back into the 1950s.

The country was amazing, and even though I don’t agree with a political structure that put millions of citizens into poverty, I met many, many Cubans who were proud of their country and proud to be Cubans. During that trip, I fell in love with the people, the scenery, the architecture, the food, and the history. And, of course, the cars.

I decided that I wouldn’t mind living in Cuba for a year. It would be an ideal locale to write a book, as Ernest Hemingway had discovered decades earlier.

Then, during the summer of 2015, Bill invited me to join him on another trip to the island nation. Of course I accepted. That’s when we decided to write this book; I would do most of the writing, and Bill would handle all the photography.

Of all the books I’ve written, this one was the most difficult. You see, I don’t speak Spanish, so all my interviews took at least twice as long because I had to go through translators. But I hope these words give you some idea about the state of the Cuban car culture.

We won’t spend a lot of time on the politics of the trade embargo on these pages; numerous academic studies and other books already exist on that subject. So, unless it relates to automobiles, we’ll avoid those topics. For the record, we don’t think the embargo had as much impact as Cuba’s failing economy. If the Cuban populace had the money, they could have bought whatever they needed from countries not participating in the US embargo.

Interestingly, while I was writing this book, I was also writing a book about a Route 66 road trip that I took around the same time. Both Cuba and Route 66 are stuck in the 1950s, and both offer visitors an opportunity to step back a half century in time. I encourage you to visit both, because both are a disappearing breed.

But visit Cuba first, because when they start building McDonald’s restaurants and Home Depots, it’ll be too late.

US–Cuba relations were changing rapidly as this book was being written, so it would not be surprising if relations were normalized by the time this book is sitting in your hands.

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