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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 Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But at the same time, the cars get bigger and more American — as in ’70s-style, gas-guzzling, Starsky-and-Hutch, Ford-Gran-Torino big.
“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 Chavez 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 Jose 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, the period in the early 1970s when oil prices quadrupled and this developing nation became flush with petrodollars.
In the capital’s wealthier districts, SUVs 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 Gomez, 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.
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.”
