Cuba's Car Culture drives through Cuba's love of American cars of the '40s and '50s, and the ingenuity that keeps them running despite the U.S. embargo.
2017 Silver Medal Winner of the International Automotive Media Competition!
The story of how Cuba came to be trapped in automotive time is a fascinating one. For decades, the island country had enjoyed healthy tourism trade and American outpost status, and by the 1950s it had the highest per capita automotive purchasing of any Latin American country. But when Cuba fell to communist rebels in 1959, so ended the inflow of new cars. Since then, trade embargo forced Cuba's car enthusiasts to develop a unique and insular culture, one marked by great creativity, such as:
-Keeping a car alive with no opportunity to acquire replacement parts
-Customizing a car with no access to aftermarket parts
-Drag racing with no drag strip
In many ways, Cuba is an automotive time warp, where the newest car is a 1959 Chevy or perhaps one of the Soviet Ladas. Cuba's Car Culture offers an inside look at a unique car culture, populated with cars that have been cut off from the world so long that they've morphed into something else in the spirit of automotive survival.
Authors Tom Cotter and Bill Warner (founder of the Amelia Island Concours) take readers on a whirlwind tour of all things automotive, beginning with Cuba's pre-Castro car and racing history, up to today's lost collector cars, street racing, and the challenges of keeping decades-old cars on the road.
Cuba's Car Culture is illustrated throughout with rare historical photos as well as contemporary photos of Cuba's current car scene. For anyone who enjoys classic cars, whether they're old Chevy Bel-Airs, Studebakers, or Ford Fairlanes, a cruise around Cuba will make you feel like a kid in a candy store.
Tom Cotter had long been involved in nearly every facet of the automotive and racing industries before writing his first book. From mechanic and auto salesman to heading the public relations department at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Cotter formed his own racing and automotive PR and marketing agency, Cotter Group. The agency represented some of the largest clients in NASCAR, IndyCar/CART, drag racing, and road racing. He has written biographies of the legendary Holman-Moody race team, Tommy Ivo and Dean Jeffries, but is best known for his series of barn find books, such as Cobra in the Barn, 50 Shades of Rust and Barn Find Road Trip. Cotter appears in the Barn Find Hunter video series, which is distributed by Hagerty Insurance. He teaches public relations at Belmont Abbey College, sits on the advisory board of McPherson College’s Auto Restoration program, and is a member of the Road Racing Driver’s Club (RRDC.) He lives in Davidson, North Carolina.
Bill Warner is founder of the Amelia Island Concours and also serves as president of his own business, H. C. Warner, Inc., an industrial filtration company. He also owns and operates Bill Warner Racing. Warner won the 2002 Meguiar's Award for Collector Car Hobby Person of the Year. Warner began as a "go-fer" for a racing team as a teenager and eventually began racing his own cars, competing in a variety of events. His writing and photography have been featured in Road & Track, as well as several European and Asian racing publications.
Sir Stirling Moss is a national treasure. Arguably the world’s greatest all-round racing driver, he was a hero to several generations of schoolboys and enthusiasts throughout the world. Moss is now so iconic his name is often used as a metaphor for “racing driver” - the name alone invokes mental images of speed, bravado, the jet-set lifestyle and a bevy of beauties with whom to live it. By 1961 his career was at its peak; absolutely at the top of his game, a charismatic sportsman famous across the world.
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