Cars of Cuba [Paperback]

Cristina Garcia (Author)

Book Description

Series: Cars of Cuba | Publication Date: September 1, 1995

Gorgeous American cars from the '40s and '50s are still being driven in Cuba today. This little book includes 53 full-color photographs of classic Packards, Oldsmobiles, Lincolns, Buicks, De Sotos, Dodges, Pontiacs, Studebakers, Fords, Chevys, and more.

Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams; First Edition edition (September 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810926318
• ISBN-13: 978-0810926318
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,433,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

NOTE TO READERS: If you'd like your copy of The Lady Matador's Hotel signed and/or dedicated, please message me through my website and I'll let you know where to send the book(s). Book clubs welcome! Return postage on me. Ole!

Cristina García is the author of five novels: Dreaming in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, and The Lady Matador's Hotel.
García has edited two anthologies, Cubanísimo: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature and Bordering Fires: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Mexican and Chicano/a Literature. Two works for young readers, The Dog Who Loved the Moon, and I Wanna Be Your Shoebox were published in 2008. A collection of poetry, The Lesser Tragedy of Death, was recently published by Akashic Press. Her new young adult novel, Dreams of Significant Girls, will be published in July 2011.

García's work has been nominated for a National Book Award and translated into a dozen languages. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and an NEA grant, among others. She has taught literature and writing at numerous universities and divides her time between Texas and northern New Mexico. Please visit her website at www.cristinagarcianovelist.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating account of Cuban ingenuity and skill., January 21, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cars of Cuba (Paperback)

A fascinating account of the ingenuity and skill of Cuban car buffs. Old American cars are kept running without the benefit of spare parts availability. It made me realize how wasteful we are in America - the Cubans would love to have access to the cars we sent to our junkyards decades ago! We go into debt to have the latest vehicle, when the one we just got rid of could have lasted a lifetime if only we had appreciated what we had and had given it the level of tender loving care that the Cubans do. The book has some very interesting stories on the Cuban car culture and how some individual 50's era American cars were kept running, and has great photos. My only complaint is that I want to know more! I want the author and photographer to go back to Cuba and take a good U.S. mechanic and a mechanical engineer with them. Then, take a lot more photos of the cars but don't limit us to the exterior. I want to see dashboards, engines, underbody, spare parts, everything! I want to see the machinery and tools inside their shops. I want to know, in full depth, all the details on how they adapt Russian parts to these cars. I want all the intimate technical details from beginning to end on a particular car. So much for the proposed sequel - Cars of Cuba gave me an evening of great pleasure as I read about and looked at pictures of Cuba's living car museum.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Keep them on street, February 5, 2000

By 

Jason Vogel (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cars of Cuba (Paperback)

A copy of "Cars of Cuba" should be given for every owner of a trailer queen automobile and all the over-restoration adepts... For real vintage car lovers it's great to see that the old Chevys, Fords, Packards, Studes and even Hudsons are still used as daily drivers by careful owners, near 50 years after the production (the paint appearance doesn't matter). Cristina Garcia and Joshua Greene, we wait anxiously for "Cars of Cuba - tome II".

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Time warp, April 19, 2001

By 

Orestes Plasencia (Bangkok, Thailand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cars of Cuba (Paperback)

This book is fabulous and every admirer of American cars of that era should have it. Not only does it give you beautiful glossy pictures of a variety of old American cars in Cuba, but it places them in beautiful (and sometimes not so beautiful) Cuban settings. There is some insight into the place that these cars have in Cuban society to this day; they are actually regarded as a member of the family, not merely as transportation. I recently spent some time in Cuba and rode around in a '58 Rambler, a '53 Chevy, and a '48 Pontiac! Not that it was always a pleasant experience (the Rambler reeked of exhaust fumes; I tore my jeans climbing out of the Chevy; and the Pontiac, with a diesel truck engine, was noisier than Kennedy Airport at rush hour), but it is amazing how they manage to keep those old cars running seemingly against all odds. This book is a tribute not just to the cars themselves, but to "the most brilliant mechanics on the face of this blue-green planet," as Garcia calls them. How ironic it is that, after four decades of Soviet/Russian influence, the prerevolutionary American cars are so prized and the newer Ladas are widely scorned.