December 12, 2010
Detroit’s Monsters Thrive on a Diet of Cheap Gas
By SIMON ROMERO
CARACAS, Venezuela — Ascending the narrow streets that wind through this city’s hillside slums, the graffiti steadily gets more radical and anti-American, repeatedly proclaiming “Yankees go home!” amid murals denouncing President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But at the same time, the cars get bigger — as in ’70s-style, gas-guzzling, Starsky-and-Hutch, Ford-Gran-Torino big — and American.
“We like our cars to be like tanks in this country, meaning they should be huge, comfortable and preferably manufactured in the United States,” said Miguel Delgado, 52, a mechanic in Los Frailes, a slum on this city’s western fringe, where he was working on a 1976 Dodge Coronet and a 1979 Chevrolet Impala.
The survival here of so many retro-chic American gas hogs, from Plymouth Valiants to Dodge Aspens and Chrysler New Yorkers, owes partly to the vagaries of Venezuela’s recent history and partly to its oil wealth. Motorists say that they drive these cars simply because they can. They smile when they hear that gasoline prices in the United States average about $3 a gallon, and much higher in parts of Europe.
Venezuela provides what might be the most generous fuel subsidy anywhere. Gasoline, currently less than 10 cents a gallon, is the cheapest in the world, undercutting even Saudi Arabia and Iran, other top oil-exporting nations, according to a study of global fuel prices by the German aid agency GTZ.
While Venezuela is a major oil producer, the subsidy still costs the government more than $9 billion a year. For all his populism, President Hugo Chávez has lamented its drain on public finances, calling gasoline prices “disgusting.”
But he has not touched the subsidy, which many Venezuelans consider a birthright. An increase in fuel prices in 1989 helped set off riots in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed.
Today filling the tank of a 1974 Lincoln Continental, a 19-foot-long monster with a V-8 engine and mileage in the low teens, costs about $1, including a small tip for the gas-station attendant. “It’s a super-economical car,” said José Pereira, 41, the proud owner of one such model.
Many of the vintage land yachts tooling around Caracas today were imported during the heyday of “Venezuela Saudita,” Saudi Venezuela, in the early 1970s, when oil prices quadrupled and this developing nation became flush with petrodollars.
A sort of proto-Chávez populist president, Carlos Andrés Pérez, nationalized the oil industry, sent aid to Bolivia and tried to turn Venezuela into a player in the developing world. A Concorde flight linked Caracas to Paris. So many Venezuelan shoppers flocked to Miami that they were called “dame dos,” Spanish for “give me two.”
“My car reminds me of the era when Venezuela was the envy of Latin America,” said Jesús Regalado, 68, a taxi driver who still cruises the city in his 1975 Dodge Dart, which he bought new thanks to a government financing program.
Much has changed since then. Oil prices plunged in the 1980s, and in the ensuing tumult, Mr. Chávez, then an obscure military officer, led an unsuccessful 1992 coup attempt against Mr. Pérez. After his release from prison, Mr. Chávez had better luck with electoral politics, winning the presidency in 1998 and turning Venezuela from a country where the United States wielded considerable influence to a thorn in Washington’s side.
His new political alliances and another roaring oil boom, which ended abruptly in 2008, lined the roads with newer cars. An Iranian venture now manufactures a four-door sedan here called the Turpial. Officials have begun importing thousands of Russian Ladas.
In the capital’s wealthier districts, S.U.V.’s like Jeep Cherokees, Ford Expeditions, even the occasional Hummer, vie for space in clogged thoroughfares with smaller Toyotas, Daewoos, Hondas and Hyundais. Thousands of motorbike couriers weave through the gridlock, adding to the chaos.
Despite the newer cars, the low growl of American guzzlers still cuts through the din of traffic, evoking in some ways the love affair that people in Cuba, Venezuela’s top ally, have with pre-1960 American automobiles.
Some motorists say they buy the cars because spare parts are easily available. Others buy them to hedge against Venezuela’s high inflation. Used cars hold their value remarkably well here: a 1979 Ford LTD Landau, for instance, sells for about $5,200 here compared with about $1,500 in the United States.
Still, the eight-cylinder workhorses remain cheaper than newer models, explaining their prevalence in some poor districts of Caracas and other cities. But the affection for the aging American giants that saves so many of them from the crushers cannot be explained by economics alone.
“I love my Fairlane precisely because it is American,” said Freddy Gómez, 54, a deliveryman in this city’s gritty Boleita district who drives a red 1974 Ford Fairlane. Grinning with a hint of mischief, he pointed to a decal on the Fairlane’s rear window, which showed a mathematical equation involving the Ford logo plus a bottle of spirits plus a female figure. The sum: a couple in an amorous embrace.
“When people see me driving my Fairlane, they know I’m a man of style,” he said. “This car is the F-16 of the highways, friend,” he added, referring to the American warplanes, acquired before diplomatic relations soured with Washington and still flown by Venezuela’s Air Force.
But many of the aging American fleet seem more like rusting turboprops than sleek fighter jets.
A 1975 Chevrolet Nova parked in the Pedregal slum had its hood tied down with string and Yosemite Sam mats on the floor. Its paint job, in hues of brown, looked like the work of a would-be Mark Rothko, punctured with dings and dents.
“Yeah, my Nova has about 30 of them,” said its owner, Marcelino Rojas, 50, a house painter.
The rubber-burning days of some of these cars might be nearing an end. News reaching here from Detroit these days speaks of exotic new electric cars like the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf. The announcement that General Motors was pulling the plug on Pontiac, the 84-year-old brand whose sales peaked in 1973, drew gasps among some Venezuelans.
“I find it hard to believe that the Americans would let Pontiac expire like that,” said Oswaldo Valdes, 21, a university student who owns a 1970 Pontiac Grand Prix. “In this country, this great automobile has decades of life ahead of it.”
María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.
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