Cars in Cuba
Rachel Fowler, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief | TLT Publisher's Pen March 2022
Cubans need to get creative when fixing their vehicles.
In June 2018, I went on an amazing trip to Cuba. A little background—my father was born in Havana, Cuba, so I always wanted to go there to see the country and where he grew up. We went to three different cities—Havana, Cienfuegos and Trinidad. A few highlights included seeing Ernest Hemingway’s home, going into the Escambray Mountains where the best Cuban coffee is grown and made and ending the trip by finding my dad’s childhood home. Cuba was my No. 1 place to visit almost my entire life, so it was great accomplishing this just a few years ago. I’ll never forget that trip. Now I need to come up with a new No. 1 place to visit—any suggestions?
Cuba is a beautiful country, and I met so many nice people on my journey. There are many great things about the country—it has the best skin and lung cancer treatments, and people fly there just for this. There’s hardly any crime. But, like many countries, it has its struggles. The infrastructure needs work—we were told that, on average, three homes collapse every day. The buildings were built primarily between 1900-1958 and are now aging. Cuba also is filled with classic cars, which was fascinating to see. It felt like I was in a time warp just walking around looking at the different cars.
Many cars in Cuba are from the 1940s and 1950s. Some are in amazing shape while others need a lot of work. While they are neat to look at, the problem is, many cars and mechanical parts are not imported from the U.S., and most cars there are American. So, Cubans need to get creative when repairing their vehicles. They cannot use proper bearings or other materials and have to be crafty when thinking about lubrication. Sometimes the necessary tools for fixing vehicles aren’t available, either. So, they count on odd parts or scrap metal, and the vehicles can run on pieces that were never intended for the cars. Maybe tribologists might think this is an interesting challenge, but many probably find it frustrating.
A problem related to this happened on our tour bus while I was there. There was a bathroom in the back of the bus, and the door broke off in the middle of the week. We did not have another hinge to put in, and it could not be fixed. So, our bus driver got creative and glued on a piece of metal that looked like a hinge. It was a temporary fix for the week, but I’m sure they had to look at it again before the next group arrived.
The moral of this story? You’ve helped me see tribology everywhere I go, and I thank you for that. It’s an important subject that affects all of us. I’m not an expert in tribology or lubrication, but I definitely thought about the subject while looking at these cars in Cuba. Tribology is truly everywhere!
You can reach TLT publisher/editor-in-chief Rachel Fowler at rfowler@stle.org.