Classic cars are a passion for us here in America. But in Cuba, they've been a necessity of life for a lot of people. Fidel Castro took…{"id":6305,"date":"2015-01-22T10:52:51","date_gmt":"2015-01-22T18:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/?p=6305"},"modified":"2015-01-22T10:52:51","modified_gmt":"2015-01-22T18:52:51","slug":"cubas-classic-car-treasure-trove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/22\/cubas-classic-car-treasure-trove\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuba’s Classic Car Treasure Trove"},"content":{"rendered":"

Classic cars\u00a0are a\u00a0passion for us here in America. But in Cuba, they’ve been a necessity of life for a lot of people. Fidel Castro took control of the island in 1959. Soon after, he made it illegal to import cars without government permission… which was virtually impossible to obtain unless you were extremely wealthy or very well-connected. And while cars were no longer getting in, some 60,000 cars were also locked away on the island, well out of the reach of foreign collectors.<\/p>\n

Over the years, Cubans have pieced together what they had in order to survive. And what they had were ’50s and very early ’60s American iron.<\/p>\n

Now that diplomatic relations with Cuba are finally easing, and it seems the U.S. is on the verge of lifting our trade embargo, many car enthusiasts are hoping to dig through Cuba’s automotive treasure trove. Of course, those looking for low mileage, perfectly restored cars will be\u00a0in for a big surprise. A lot\u00a0of the Cuban classics have hundreds of thousands of miles on them, and American or not, they\u00a0could very well have, for instance, a Peugeot diesel engine under the hood. Between Castro’s restrictions and the U.S. embargo imposed on the island, replacement parts have not been easy to locate on the island in the last half century. Many\u00a0of the cars will have had makeshift repairs done, and a lot will be straight up Frankenstein mobiles.<\/p>\n

That said, we still expect there to be a huge amount of interest in Cuba’s burgeoning classic car market, with many collectors simply wanting to own a piece of Cuba’s history. McKeel Hagerty, CEO of Hagerty Insurance<\/a><\/strong>, said recently that he believes many collectors will pay two or three times the true value of these pieced together wonders of working class engineering. Hagerty expects that being a piece of Cuban history will add significant value to these long-lost treasures and, in some cases, people will buy them simply as art pieces because of the ingenuity put into them.<\/p>\n