When you live in any city, you soon find that it agrees with you and it maddens you. I think that was what Dickens was getting at when he penned the words of the title. Cuenca is like that. It maddens me because there is no baseball, make that
almost no baseball. In four months we have come across two guys enjoying batting practice on an unused soccer field. But Cuenca gladdens me with its cars. Growing up in Motown makes cars important. In Cuenca there is no snow, therefore no snow melt to hurry the disintegration of your car. New cars are expensive in Ecuador. Therefore cars remain on the road until the very last instant before the wheels come off. We have pix of some of the interesting features of Cuenca transportation.
I will run through the pix quickly: The blue Mini is vintage English. There are about a dozen or so in Cuenca, all very well cared for. Yamaha motorcycles. Why are they in the post? If you look close you will see they are in the Mall del Rio. Even guys who can think of a dozen reasons to eschew the Mall will see the wisdom of selling cycles in the Mall. Same with the Hyundai showroom. It is right there in the Mall del Rio. Genius!
Check out the blue/gray station wagon. I found no emblems on it. The yellow headlamps gave it a French flair. Puegeot maybe? How about the pix of motorcycles in the appliance shops? The brands are mixed local and imports. Again, genius! Check out that little white rear engine survivor. The guy driving was close to my age and had his wife and granddaughter in the car. They were stuck in traffic and advancing at the same rate as the foot traffic. While he stopped at a light I asked him what it was. He said it was a Shibata. I asked a couple times because I was unfamiliar with the brand name. He got as big a kick out of my asking as I got out of seeing the vehicle. Again no emblems on his ride.
We threw in the pix of the Datsun 210 and the anonymous red wagon because there must be a hundred such vehicles around town. All vintages and in every state of revival. The white car is a Mada Cosmo. It is the earliest of the rotaries. I believe I read on the Internet that it was built from '65 to '72. I am not sure this example has a rotary although it did have an RX-5 emblem on the front fender. It was parked so close to the building we could not get a pic of the front. The Cosmo was parked a half block from home. We came across the Volkswagen 1600 across town. It was odd and interesting until we got around to the front, then it became arresting.
The last three we found in the neighborhood: The green Toyota truck was parked across the street. The emblem on the front fender identifies it as a Stout, a model designation I see on new Toyotas called Tacoma in the States. The green one is a great example, well cared for and looking bulletproof. The green wagon is a Mazda, parked at what I think is a phone company substation. The Ford Maverick is included for old times sake. We saw this red one the same day the two baseball players were desecrating the soccer field with batting practice. It might have been their car as the soccer field is just out of the frame to the left.
We will likely post more car pix in the future as more examples are caught in the viewfinder. You have to love this place for its cars. Enjoy!
