In Cuba, where US vehicles older than the average inhabitant are a common sight on city streets, Pablo Manso makes his living in a particular niche: repairing Chevrolets from 1955, 1956 and 1957.
The self-taught technician plies his trade in a workshop he built 15 years ago at his home in Placetas, a small city in the rural center of the communist island.
He recreates Chevy parts with machines he built himself in a country where US sanctions have crippled imports of vehicles, parts and tools of the trade.
Photo: AFP
“Modern cars do not interest me,” the 53-year-old Manso said with a shrug.
It took him years to teach himself his craft, working day and night and learning through trial and error.
“I was tearing my hair out,” he said with a laugh.
His efforts have paid off, and Chevrolet owners from all over Cuba — even further afield — look to him to keep their motors running.
“People are commissioning pieces from many countries,” Manso said proudly — citing orders from Canada, Italy, Spain and the US.
In the first half of the 20th century, Cubans imported tens of thousands of US vehicles, then brand new.
Economic sanctions declared in 1962 against the government of Fidel Castro stopped the influx.
“We need tractors, not Cadillacs,” Castro said at the time.
It is estimated that about 60,000 US classic vehicles from the 1940s and 1950s are in circulation in Cuba.
They are pampered by their owners, who rely on them for daily transport, but also to convey tourists in a country where the vehicle have themselves become a key attraction.
Manso owns a red and white Chevrolet Bel Air from 1955, a shining museum piece with almost all its original parts except for the engine, which is from Toyota.
This has been the biggest adaptation to most surviving Chevys in Cuba, with the original engines not surviving the passage of time.
Manso said that Chevrolet “made a leap towards modernity” in 1955, and that year, 1956 and 1957 were the “years of success” for the US automaker — hence his chosen specialty.
He was once visited by the head of a Chevrolet workshop in Miami, accompanied by the manager of an auto parts factory in Taiwan, who had “goose bumps — he could not believe these rustic machines could produce such quality parts,” he said.
Manso has taken on a 32-year-old apprentice, Lemaydi Madrigal.
Shaping a piece of metal for a part, she said she knew “almost nothing about cars” at first.
“What I like most [to make] are the floors of the luggage compartments: They are big, they are complicated, but I like them,” she said.
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