American cars are not as sought-after as they used to be. Of the top 25 global best-selling carmakers of 2018, only four American brands make the list: Ford (no. 3), Chevrolet (no. 7), Jeep (no. 15) and Buick (no. 19), according to automotive business intelligence firm JATO.
But the golden age of American cars was arguably from 1946 to 1973, according to designers from that era. This was before foreign cars outperformed and outsold American brands. Those Detroit-made cars, from brands like Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, and, of course, Ford, Chevrolet, and Cadillac, were brought over to Cuba in the 1950s, when the island nation was the hippest vacation spot for wealthy Americans.
Ever since Fidel Castro's communist revolution in 1959, however, Cuba has been relatively cut off from America, cars included. (As mentioned earlier, they don't even sell Coke there). Locals have used elbow grease and ingenuity to keep those chrome-plated cars running for the last 60 years.
And with increasing American tourism to the country, taxi rides in classic cars have proven lucrative, at $30 an hour — about as much as a Cuban doctor's monthly pay, according to a report by CNN. To charge that much, they've made sure their roadsters live up to the name "un carro clásico."