GM Rules the Road in Cuba

It's not likely there was that much detailed information going around, 8 years ago.
The cars should stay down there. They compliment those Spanish ruins better than that Soviet junk and other modern vehicles. They should just quit that childish embargo which only punishes common people. Let them do commerce, so that they can start making money to buy parts in the U.S.. Perhaps, then we could send them crate engines as CARE packages.

 

It'll be like this when the embargo lifts: Collectors with fat wads of cash and ton's of piled parts will flock down there and buy what they can. Meanwhile, others will take running cars that don't sell well here and move them en masse down there to sell. That's what will happen.

 

Your first claim seems plausible, like popping the cork from the bottle that lets the evil genie out. It was the same way, in the former Soviet Union. Those people, over there, would literally sell their own mothers for a buck. Yeah, maybe most Cubans will be inclined to bargain hard and off their heaps, so that they can get comfortable. The passionate ones will, however, keep their cars. Others with whatever original examples of cars in demand might hang on to theirs and store them safely, solely to speculate on them.
Even though, I'd like to see old heaps as part of the scenery there, as much as I'd like to see pre-mid-eighties French cars decorate Paris, like what has taken place in France, I doubt that most Cubans will view their cars as being comodities, rather than family members on wheels. Once they find out that having everything you want isn't long-term gratifying, at that point they're likely to regret parting with their cars.

 

Bumpty bump:

 

A friend has just returned from Cuba and took these. He says they were all "twenty footers", at best.

 

Totally beautiful. Those are the ones the collectors will want (especially the ragtops), and pay the tremendous bucks for. And yeah, when those Cubans, who did sell, get to the end of their money, they will have buyer's remorse, no doubt about it.

 

I don't think there will be a rush to buy many of these cars. Many, dare I say most, have been cobbled together not only in the motive power but suspension and even bodies. My friend says some of the "convertibles" had obviously
had their roofs chopped off.
I think very little remains of the original cars.

 

20 footers?! Does that mean they look good from 20 feet away? That’s a good one. I always say “it looks good...going down the road anyways”