One of the cars used by Camilo Cienfuegos is on display at the Havana Automobile Museum. Photo: Ismael Francisco/ Cubadebate.
One of Adolf Hitler’s cars, a 12-cylinder vehicle with armor plate over an inch thick and armored glass that Mercedes-Benz made especially for him, sat parked in a garage for years. from Havana. An American official acquired it in Germany and while waiting for the permit that would allow him to enter the United States, he stored it in the warehouse used by Francisco Nava to park vehicles at 62-64 Morro Street, between Refugio and used Genios, very close to the presidential palace.
Hitler’s Mercedes finally made it to North America in 1950 and, as far as we know, was displayed at the Museum of Automobile Antiquities in Highland Park, Illinois between 1974 and 1975. A collector from St. Louis had recently purchased it at auction. He paid $178,000 for the vehicle at the time.
Cars with history have great value to collectors who invest a lot of money in them, although they all end up in museums like the Smithsonian Institution, home to some of the world’s most famous cars.
In the United States, the car that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt drove during his time in the White House survives, specially adapted for him, taking into account his paralyzed condition. The first automobile built by Henry Ford is also preserved. In Bogotá, this chronicler saw the car of the liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, whose assassination triggered the events that went down in history as Bogotazo. And in the town hall of Carolina, Puerto Rico, he could see the also armored car of former governor Luis Muñoz Marín, the architect of the commonwealth, which, I was told, once belonged to Roosevelt.
Some time ago, the Shoteby House in London auctioned off none other than James Bond’s car: an Aston Martin DB5 model that Sean Connery used in Agent 007’s detective adventure series. I don’t know what came of it. I learned that its then owner, American businessman Jerry Lee, had bought it for $12,000 and expected to receive more than five million for the vehicle.
Other old cars
Experts say that Duesenberg is one of the most sought-after brands at classic car auctions. The model, which actress Greta Garbo purchased in 1933, was sold 40 years later for $40,000. The brown car was designed for them by Fernández and Darrin, famous Parisian coachbuilders; The interior, all in cream, was designed by a French company who equipped the interior with 16 compartments with locks and installed a small combination safe under the right rear fender to protect the diva’s jewels.
During the days of World War II, Garbo hid his vehicle in an area of the French countryside, preventing it from falling into the hands of the occupying German army. After the war, the actress sold it to an officer of the North American troops for an undisclosed amount, and he handed it over to a professional seller. It would eventually be purchased by a collector who at the time had 23 examples in his private automobile museum.
In addition to the already mentioned Duesenberg, the Bugatti sports car is said to be one of the most sought-after and affordable classic cars. The Hispanic-Swiss is another well-paid relic. The most sought-after category of antique automobiles includes the few 16-cylinder Cadillacs manufactured between 1930 and 1933. Al Capone owned a vehicle of this model and had a bar and a compartment for two machine guns installed. Eligio Sardiñas, our famous children’s chocolate, had another one. We will talk about his fate later.
From overnight
The Cuban streets are a giant rolling museum. Cars of unimaginable brands and models, the so-called Almendrones, circulate through them. Hardship keeps most of them alive and only the ingenuity and creativity of Cubans manage to keep them active. Ugly, loud and with a thousand and one adaptations, they go some way to solving the traffic problem and giving the cityscape a picturesque touch.
Others, however, are so attractive and retain such originality in their lines, parts and pieces that they could well be part of a museum collection, such as that of the automobile depot in Old Havana or those on display in Baconao Park. from Santiago de Cuba. El Depósito, renamed El Garaje, is located in San Ignacio between Amargura and Teniente Rey.
The Depósito houses all kinds of vehicles – travel vehicles, funeral vehicles, cargo vehicles… – that stand out for their age, as well as others that owe their fame to the characters who used them, such as Commander Camilo Cienfuegos’ Oldsmobile from 1959 , and another car of the same make but from 1960, used by the famous Celia Sánchez, as well as the 1930 Packard of former President Alfredo Zayas and the VW of the writer Alejo Carpentier and his wife Lilia, who drove it. El Garaje recently added a Mack tracked truck to its collection, one of which was used for decades to transport goods in Havana until 1960.
There is also the luxury Fiat 1930 in which Flor Loynaz, its owner, moved the poet Federico García Lorca around Havana, especially at night, and took him to the port upon his return to Spain, after three months in Cuba 12. June of the above year.
There is a legend surrounding this vehicle. It is said that it was used under Flor’s leadership in September 1932 in the attack on Clemente Vázquez Bello, Senate President and confidant of the dictator Gerardo Machado, who called him “my lovebird.” However, the presence of a woman at this incident or any similar incident has never been reported, and it seems unlikely that anyone used a car that belonged to them to commit the incident. Those defending Flor’s participation point to the bullet holes that the Fiat in question has in its rear, since for years the vehicle was located on the second floor – yes, on the second floor – of the Santa Bárbara Ranch, Flor’s residence, in La Coronela. Hidden?
Baconao is home to a collection of more than 1,500 miniatures representing automobile makes and models from the 19th century. 54 Buick Skylark. Che Guevara’s ’59 Chevrolet is kept at the study center that bears his name.
The oldest automobile in existence in Cuba is believed to be a 1902 Cadillac, which is part of the collections of the Guanabacoa Museum. A 1905 Cadillac is on display in the El Garaje collection. At this point, it had been seven years since the new mode of transport had appeared on the dusty streets of Havana: a noisy car that ran on gasoline and reached a speed of 10 km/h: a French Parisian that cost 1,000 pesos to its owner. Six months later a second car arrived, a Rochet & Schneider with 8 horsepower and higher speed. Shortly afterwards, a third car arrived, this time a freight vehicle provided to a cigarette company. At the beginning of the 20th century, cinema and aviation, the electric tram and the automatic telephone also came to the island.
Everything changed overnight, said the writer Renée Méndez Capote; Spanish rule made it dependent on the United States. From the era of animal traction to the era of internal combustion engines. From phrases like “getting the couple together” to “getting out of the car.” From the reins to the rudder to the lever or pedal brake.
From then on everything accelerated. While 11 of these machines roamed the streets of Havana in 1901 and the first car arrived in Santiago in 1902, in 1913 more than 1,000 vehicles passed through the capital, and in 1916 there were 1,300 private cars, 1,900 rental cars and 219 trucks. In 1958, Cuba was the sixth most populous country in the world in terms of average number of cars per capita. They were surpassed by the USA, Canada and Great Britain, in that order. Venezuela and West Germany.
impossible museum
Many cars were left on the road. Their traces were lost because they were dismantled to use their parts and pieces in other vehicles, they were made into scrap metal, or they were left lying around and forgotten by everyone. Time has swallowed her up.
Nothing is known about the beige 1949 Chevrolet that Fidel Castro used in the 1952 election campaign when he sought to become a representative of the Cuban People’s Party (Orthodox) in the House of Representatives. The blue Packard convertible wedge, also from 1949, in which Eduardo Chibás, president of this political organization, toured the island during his election campaigns, seems to have been lost forever. After the Orthodox leader’s death in 1951, the wedge was kept in the garage of the Chibás building on the corner of G 25 in El Vedado. From there it mysteriously disappeared after Batista’s coup on March 10, 1952. In recent years there have been unsuccessful attempts to include it in El Garaje’s collections.
A pointless search would be that of the green Packard that the courageous Ángel Pío Álvarez, paradigm of “direct action” in the fight against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado, used in 1932 to take the life of Captain Miguel Calvo, head of the security department. State police experts. The young revolutionary and the soldier “hunted” each other. One morning near the National Hotel, Pío won the game against the officer, although the “experts” finally told him the score in January 1933.
A subject, killing time on the Malecón wall despite the early hour, informed the police that Calvo’s car, a Dodge Brother with the official license plate number 15, had been shot at from a green Packard, and from that moment on the Authorities worked intensively to search for the vehicle; Information also disclosed by the press.
After the action, Pío hid the vehicle in a warehouse in Marianao until he retrieved it days later to take it to San Miguel de Padrón, dismantle it and throw its parts into a lagoon. Historian Newton Briones Montoto, in his book Direct Action, which details this event, reports that while driving, at a point where traffic forced Pío to slow down, a group of children shouted as he passed, “Look, Look, the green Packard.” Pío didn’t lose his composure. He parked the car next to a police officer and asked him to call in the boys because “that’s not the car they were looking for.”
Pío Álvarez’s green Packard, disappeared by Pío himself, is part of an impossible museum of lost cars.
This collection would include, among others, the Buick with private license plate in which President Carlos Prío left the Presidential Palace on March 10, 1952, leaving the car with license plate 001 in the garage of the Palatine Mansion, which was that of the Cuban leaders. And the armored Lincoln that Machado left behind when he fled on August 12, 1933. Like this one, there is also another that does not appear, that of General Alberto Herrera, head of the Cuban army since 1922 and who accompanied Machado in his fall.
Another and not insignificant piece of this imaginary museum would be Kid Chocolate’s aforementioned 16-cylinder Cadillac. It cost $25,000 new, but the boy used it in 1931 and paid just over $18,000 for the vehicle. Years later they offered him 42,000, but the famous boxer said he wouldn’t settle for less than 60,000. In the end he was forced to get rid of it for very little money. It consumed an insane amount of fuel, the model was discontinued, and replacement parts were hard to come by. In 1970, a car like Chocolate’s Cadillac was worth more than $50,000. How much would it be worth today?