Magic Scrap: Venezuela’s Car Culture

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IS THERE A HOLE
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Tales of Travel in Panama without a Car

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A chunk of a car that was last seen in an American cul-de-sac

A grill awaits its reincarnation at a part shop near Barquisimeto.

Magic Scrap: Venezuela’s Car Culture

hen a 20-year old, rusted car in the States becomes unfashionable, the owner gladly unloads it and begins to talk about it in the past tense. Think the car is dead? Think again. That same vehicle might still be slurping up cheap gas in the mountain highways of Venezuela.

Or at least a fender of it.

Venezuela’s automobiles never seem to die. They hobble along with whatever prosthetic replacements arrive via container shipments from the States.

The South American country’s thrifty car culture developed thanks to the rise and fall of Venezuela’s oil fortunes. In 1973, the price of oil quadrupled, spurring a Venezuelan spending spree. The country’s rising middle class engorged itself on American-made cars. When oil prices fell in the mid-1980s, the money to buy a new car just wasn't there anymore for many in the country. While Cuba’s roads are viewed as a time capsule of America in the 1950s, Venezuela’s roads are, for the most part, frozen in the 1980s.

Pimp my taxi ride. Or not.

Thus, Venezuelan highways remain the province of leprous Chevy Novas and boxy Buicks with black eyes. On some of the cars, the replacement bumpers still wear the bumper stickers of their unwitting American donors, which lead to sightings of traffic-bound Caracas autos declaring “My Child is a Springfield Honor Roll Student.” If I ignored the stunning mountain scenery—and the occasional, shiny SUV—I almost expected to hear the latest Men at Work song shooting from the radio. The acrid scent of the cold war seemed to waft back in. And I could have sworn I saw a mullet or two…

But a visit to a car-part dealer sobered me up. One day, my taxi driver, owning the road in his 1987 Buick Century (a late model for Venezuela), informed me that he needed to make a quick pit stop to procure a new windshield washer fluid container. The dealer he visited only sold American car parts. An acre of them. Walking among the rows of neatly sorted bumpers, headlights, and grills for Chevys and Fords, I could not help but to think of the place as a showcase of my country’s car-centered psyche—dissected. Not maliciously, but lovingly. Who else would preserve an era that America’s consumption culture discarded years ago?

And since the government subsidizes the price of gasoline (reducing its cost to a quaint twelve cents per gallon, the lowest on the planet), there does not seem to be any reason to trade in that old fuel hog for a newer model. Besides, if you did, your child would no longer be an honor roll student.

Political murals and Chevy Novas: which does Venezuela have more of? I lost count of both. But one thing is clear: the streets of Venezuela dispel the urban myth that Novas did not sell well in Latin America. The myth took hold because of the mistaken belief that "Nova" sounds like "no va" (doesn’t go) to Spanish speakers. Outside of naive business school students, no one still believes that one anyway, right?

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