On the road with Havana's street racers

"Why do we race? When we were born, it was in our blood. It’s the way to live, it’s better than… with the girls.” Rey illustrates this point by gyrating his hips. Uncontrollable laughter and much backslapping ensues. Thing is, I don’t doubt him for a second, racing needs to be that good given the sacrifices these Cuban drag racers have to make.

To move forward with this story, first we must look back to the 1959 Cuban revolution that triggered a trade embargo by the US. Car imports, besides a few Ladas and Moskvitches from the Soviet Union, were virtually impossible, forcing Cubans to make do with what they had. It’s the reason why the Caribbean’s biggest island is crawling with Buicks, Chevys, Oldsmobiles and Fords from the Fifties, some in good nick, some limping around like terminally ill dinosaurs.

This feature was originally published in Issue 284 of Top Gear magazine.

Something else happened when the revolution took hold. Following a devastating crash that killed 10 spectators and injured 40 at the 1958 Cuban GP, racing was banned entirely by the government. That ban ended in 2013 when Cuba’s first legally sanctioned race meet for 55 years took place at the Artemisa drag strip – an event detailed in a new documentary, Havana Motor Club. But since then, there’s been no further meets, forcing the racers to return to their underground roots, testing their machines against one another in the quieter corners of Cuba, beyond the watchful eye of La Policia.

“It’s always more exciting when it’s illegal. When something’s forbidden, it feels so much better.” That’s Piti, one of the stars of the Havana Motor Club film and owner of the world’s loudest black ’51 Chevy, transplanted with a 300bhp Ford V8. If it’s power you’re interested in, though, you want Rey Tito’s red and white ’55 Chevy Bel Air, another star of HMC and the fastest car on the island. Fitted with a supercharged Chevrolet small-block V8, it churns out 500bhp and enough decibels to split nearby tree trunks clean in half.

The third member of our furtive drag meet today is Luis and his pristine banana-coloured Bel Air, also a ’55 Chevy running the same engine with a little less boost – good for 400bhp, I’m told. I ask if he has a print-out of the power/torque curve I can study. He stares back blankly. Just my little joke.

In isolation these cars are masterpieces – cool, quick – but to really appreciate them, one must consider the conditions under which they were created. These guys are not wealthy (the average Cuban earns just $20 a month), sourcing parts is often expensive and slow, and fuel prices are on par with Europe. The Government won’t allow entire engines to be imported, so these Frankensteins are built up through graft and ingenuity, by fixing and reusing a jumble of period parts. These are not matching-numbers classics – the fastest man is always the most creative. 

Wrapping them in cotton wool, though, doesn’t appear to be the Cuban way. We’ve been at our makeshift drag strip – a quiet road on the outskirts of Havana – all of 10 minutes before the drivers start peacocking. Piti goes first, inviting me into the passenger seat before leaving a pair of 20ft stripes on the road then showing me what his car is capable of; ferocious straight-line pace and profound tinnitus, mostly. Briefly, I feel like Danny Zuko, minus the leather and Brylcreem, blasting down the LA riverbed. I choose not to share this with Piti.

The other two take the bait, drive up to an invisible start line, designated by muggins here, and on my signal unleash hell down the slender and undulating strip. Their doorhandles pass inches from my hips, I feel the heat of the engines on my knuckles. This is real. No health and safety or risk assessments here – it’s motorsport at its most basic. There is no timing equipment, the guest starter has no chequered flag and there are no particular regulations, just a group of men who live and breathe fast cars indulging their passion in the only way they know how.

These cars are celebrities in Havana and when spotted out and about it doesn’t take long for the word to get around. By now, what was supposed to be a quiet affair has attracted a growing crowd, and they’re keen to get in on the action. I look up to see a pimped-up Lada, complete with fixed rear spoiler and GT-R badging – both crucial performance-enhancing modifications – throwing up clouds of dust as it doughnuts around a gravel car park. The crowd goes wild. I go wild. It’s infectious.  

After a few hours, with tyre tread and fuel tanks running low, we decide to slow things down and go for a cruise. Rey whistles and gestures for me to jump in with him. Secretly, I’m flattered, Rey comes from a dynasty of mechanics, the Titos, that are famous throughout Cuba, and his car reflects his family’s expertise. It’s bonkers. I open the door, grinning, and discover why he has the edge on the competition. His car is built to a painfully strict RS spec. There is only one seat, for him, so I perch on the corrugated floor pan, hands behind me like I’m at a picnic, and we peel off onto a three-lane highway.

As the sweat from my forehead starts to form a puddle between my legs, I realise he hasn’t fitted levers to wind the windows down, or doorhandles – just a piece of wire to release the catch. And then, as the heat is about to overwhelm me, we run out of fuel and roll to a stop on the hard shoulder. This, it turns out, is a poignant demonstration of why most Cuban old-timers aren’t quite what they seem.

Given the cost of fuel, the majority of classics you see out on the road are actually transplanted with leggy diesels imported by the government from Europe, who sell them on for the extortionate price of around $4,000 each. We meet a man who’s been restoring classics from the ground up, and converting them to diesel power, for the last 20 years and he says it hurts him every time. Take him a wreck, and for around $10,000 he’ll hand you back an immaculate classic, with a Peugeot or Mercedes oil-burner under the bonnet. He’s an artist, of that there’s no doubt, but it’s the racers who are laughing in the face of fuel consumption and keeping the original V8s alive. 

Earlier in the day, poking around the racer’s garages, it’s obvious they don’t have a lot, but what they do have goes on the cars – so the financial sacrifices are huge. Take Jote, he’s got a mangled wrist (an injury sustained while fixing a car) so couldn’t come racing, and currently only has the shell of a once glorious race car to this name. Jote is a rafter – those who try and leave Cuba illegally to make it to the US by sea – and has tried and failed on countless attempts. Ironically, his car used to be powered by a boat engine salvaged from the bottom of the sea, but he had to sell it, then his gearbox, then every component in between to fund his attempts. It’s a stark reminder that while doing what they love, these Havana drag racers do so under the harshest economic conditions imaginable.

But things are changing fast. A few years ago, Raul Castro brought in a series of social and economic reforms allowing Cubans to start businesses and own their own cars. Then, in September 2015 the US loosened trade and travel restrictions, the precursor to Obama’s visit to Havana earlier this year – the first time a US president has set foot on Cuban soil since 1928.

Progress is slow, but development of a country that time forgot is coming, and with it will be a wave of US car collectors wanting to swoop in and strip out the classics. Even Hollywood has caught on – filming for Fast and Furious 8 has just wrapped in Cuba, with several of the cars we met today taking starring roles.

But the Havana drag racers are as far from Hollywood as it’s possible to get. They may be offered tempting sums for their cars and soon have access to the engines and components that they’ve always craved, but I have a feeling they’ll hold out, and do things the way they’ve always been done. Because it’s never been about money for them, it’s in their blood.