Why does Cuba have such famously old American cars?

The United States imposed a trade embargo in 1962 and nothing American could be legally imported after it - so the roughly 150,000 American cars already on the island in 1959 became the fleet, and had to be kept running. Cuba also restricted private car imports and sales for decades, so even non-American vehicles were scarce.

The result is not preservation in any classic-car sense. Under those Chevrolet and Buick bodies are Soviet Lada engines, diesel truck motors, hand-cut gaskets, machined parts made from whatever was available, and bodywork rebuilt many times over. They are working vehicles maintained by an improvisational engineering culture that developed because there was no alternative - the Cuban term for it, resolver, means to work something out with what you have.

The law changed in 2011 to allow Cubans to buy and sell cars freely, and in 2013 to allow imports - but prices for new vehicles were set so high, in a country where state salaries are very low, that the old fleet remains. What was a symbol of isolation has become a tourist product, with restored convertibles running the Havana seafront for hard currency, which is its own kind of economic history.