CHE’S CHEVROLET, FIDEL’S OLDSMOBILE

When Fidel Castro entered Havana in 1959, it was on the back of a Willys jeep. Che Guevara pulled in a little later in a Studebaker, and a socialist paradise was born.

Well, sort of, says Latin America hand and writer-on-offbeat-subjects Schweid (The Cockroach Papers, 1999, etc.): Fidel and Che drove capitalism and brand names off the island, but they created a vast unintended museum devoted to American cars of the ’40s and ’50s in the bargain. Cuba had always been car-crazy, writes Schweid; as early as 1913 there “were over 4,000 motorized vehicles in Cuba,” including “Oldsmobiles, Locomobiles, Overlands, Cadillacs, Dodges, Whites, Chalmerses, Packards, and Chevrolets.” Some of those flivvers were still in service in WWII era, when, Schweid notes, “for Cubans who wanted one, only the used car market remained, and even this was limited.” The hungry Cuban market had to make do with dreams, which Ford nurtured by spending thousands on ads in Havana newspapers during the war years. So did Chevy and Studebaker and every other American manufacturer. When the guerrilla armies overthrew the Bautista regime at the end of the ’50s, the island was full of Chryslers, Ramblers, Cadillacs, Dodges, Plymouths, and any conceivable American mark, all of which have since “served the Revolution tirelessly, and continue to do so on a daily basis, carrying its loads, transporting its people,” even as Fidel has given up his Willys for a chauffeured Mercedes and even as thousands of suffering Cubanos have had to endure Yugos, Skodas, Ladas, Warsawas, and other automotive horrors from the former Eastern Bloc, which inspired enterprising islanders to make an art of recycling, retrofitting, and revering Yanquí wheels.

Schweid, hardly the first American traveler to Cuba to note the island’s auto-mania, makes this an occasion to write both a sturdy history and a lyrical song of love for the cars of yesteryear. The result: a treat for motorheads and geopolitics buffs alike.