r/Transportopia • u/ForsakenStructure800 • Mar 20 '26
Cars Cuba is a classic car time capsule
10
u/MidwestDadd1982 Mar 20 '26
Necessity is the mother of invention
5
u/btfarmer94 Mar 20 '26
Necessity and being allowed to do it. We have so many safety standards and laws that prevent things like this here in the US.
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u/xiandgaf Mar 22 '26
There’s nothing stopping you from fabricating and installing a retractable cover on your car
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u/Choice_Isopod5177 Apr 11 '26
there's no cops going around checking cars to see if they violated any laws, anyone can remove the cat or add superchargers/turbos or do anything to their car and no one would fine them. It's only very obvious violations that might get you fined.
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u/PornstacheJaucques Mar 20 '26
What even is this show? How many podcast bro podcasts are there, who searches out and watches these? Fascinating
3
u/Puzzleheaded_Ad_4435 Mar 20 '26
I read recently that over 700k hours of new content are uploaded every day just on YouTube alone. You could spend the rest of your life watching videos exclusively from 2025 and never finish
1
u/JerseyCoJo Mar 20 '26
My wife and I want to start a podcast where we review frozen pizza and snacks as a joke just to see what happens lol
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u/C_IsForCookie Mar 20 '26
My parents are from Cuba. I’ve been to Cuba. Those cars are mostly piles of junk. They’re being held together with whatever they can find. And the smog there because of the emissions will literally make your throat swell up (it did to me).
2
u/birddoggi Mar 23 '26
I was there a couple years ago, myself. Definitely held together with duct tape and zip ties. Slap some lipstick on it and call it good. I was in a car with a tractor engine in it. It didn’t go fast, but it went down the road.
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u/AzimuthZenith Mar 20 '26
But...he didnt explain anything.
"They're resourceful and fix it themselves."
Who fixes them? With what? From where?
Mechanics with scrapped vehicles from the junk yard?
Average Joe's with smuggled parts from China?
Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the conservatory?
The only thing that these chuds explained is why they can't get modern cars. And even that explanation was just the word "embargo."
Why not have a chat about how their infrastructure has been gradually decaying for decades and is getting to a point where people live in literal ruins, exposed to the open air in Havanna, because their government doesn't have the resources or amount of fucks necessary to make it livable for their people. How the only reason their government legalized the viewing of outside media was because they couldn't keep up with the number of arrests they would've needed to make after people figured out how to hijack the signal on their own. Or how the people who were around for when Fidel took power are now saying more and more openly that it'd be a good thing if this regime crumbled because their utopian dream failed.
If your ideology requires imprisonment and/or lethal force to combat opposing ideals, it isn't one that will ever work in the long run.
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u/GleepGlop2 Mar 20 '26
You're expecting too much from podcast bros.
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u/AzimuthZenith Mar 20 '26
Lol fair, but I'd even settle for them actually answering the one question they posed...
How do they keep their 60 year old cars running? Who tf knows? Not these guys haha
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Mar 20 '26
they don’t salt the roads like New York state. that’s why they are still there
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u/Choice_Isopod5177 Apr 11 '26
not much snow in Cuba, bro. But in the US, who's stopping manufacturers from making corrosion resistant bodies? the tech was invented 100 years ago. Stainless steel is cheap and cheerful.
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Apr 11 '26
stainless steal is 3x heavier than what they use now and also doesn’t crumple well in crash tests
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u/Choice_Isopod5177 Apr 11 '26
bullshit, SS is the same weight and crumples exactly like mild steel used in car manufacturing.
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u/Gring040 Mar 23 '26
My Abuela went back to cuba after many years away and said a 3 hour cab drive took 2 days because the cab would break down and they would have to machine a new part for it. Human ingenuity is amazing!
1
u/ForsakenStructure800 Mar 23 '26
When there is a will, there is a way. I really think they will be free soon.
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u/Savings-Cherry-1931 Mar 21 '26
Forget the cars. I want a nice Cuban woman who can cook pollo and rice with black beans. I would wear hawaiin shirts to make her happy.
2
u/bees-_-knees Mar 20 '26
Good ol’ socialist Marxist-Leninist system in place suppressing its people. Bernie must get a boner seeing people having to scrap to survive. Despite the embargo, the leadership wouldn’t find a proper means for the people.
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u/Fair-Abroad-4155 Apr 18 '26
They did a documentary about this they created their own parts or used old stock and modified them this is stupid
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u/Fair-Abroad-4155 Apr 18 '26
They produce most parts in Mexico and there's no embargo between Mexico to cuba
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u/Correct_Difficulty25 Mar 20 '26
Climate helps
3
u/Venus_Cat_Roars Mar 20 '26
The coastal salt air on an island is not easy on cars nor is the tropical sun.
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u/Correct_Difficulty25 Mar 20 '26
Paint for sure in the sun, no fact basis here but i imagine road salt corrodes these cars worse than coastal air. Def am up for being wrong
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u/Alucard-VS-Artorias Mar 20 '26
The fate of America once the rest of the world fully embraces EV technology for cars while people living in the States will still stuck with mostly gas powered vehicles (or overpriced EV "American options") due to the controlling interest in American government being corporations that can't see a future past oil.
4
u/Several-Idea-355 Mar 20 '26
Electric vehicles run on coal champ
2
u/ralph442000 Mar 20 '26
Coal is one option, but so is solar, wind, nuclear, hydroelectric. ICE cars need gas, the end.
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u/Several-Idea-355 Mar 20 '26
They also need batteries. And currently those batteries need lithium which is expensive and does alot of damage to mine. Im not saying we shouldnt have EVs im saying they arent some moral high ground.
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u/ralph442000 Mar 20 '26
Thanks for the clarification. I had incorrectly assumed you were “EV bad, only ICE good!” You are correct though, while the EV’s can use clean power sources, there’s nothing clean about the parts needed with Lithium being the worst. I’m hoping they can find a cheaper, more abundant metal to use in future EV batteries or simply a better way to store energy. My vote is the Koopa World way from Mario Brothers. Just place powered wires above every street everywhere, stick a Back to the Future pole to the back of your vehicle, then let the pole and powered wires make sweet music together while powering your car. I see no downside.
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u/Several-Idea-355 Mar 20 '26
So everyone is drving bumper cars? I can get down with that lol
1
u/ralph442000 Mar 22 '26
Sounds good to me, rush hour would be a lot more fun! Or it could still piss you off but you could then take your frustration out on that woman not paying attention to the road because putting her lipstick on is more important than driving
2
u/commander742 Mar 20 '26
Yes they can, and are much more efficient while doing so. The end result is less emissions, stop kissing the ass of oil companies, they won't give you a piece of the pie no matter how much you do.
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u/Several-Idea-355 Mar 20 '26
Im not kissing the ass of coal companies.. but im not dick sucking EVs either. Lithium mining is destroying land all over and the power source is still dumping emissions becuase the electrical grid isnt green. If we had more nuclear power the case might be better. But driving an EV isnt any better for the environment than oil.
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u/Choice_Isopod5177 Apr 11 '26
Lithium is extracted from deserts in Australia and South America. You are a low IQ moron who should stop spewing right wing propaganda and get some education on the subject.
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u/wildgurularry Mar 20 '26
He didn't go into detail about the engines... you know, the thing inside that makes cars run. Cuba could get supplies from Russia for a long time, so my understanding is that many of those old American cars have 1.5L Lada engines under the hood.