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preserved for all time.
    There’s Castro’s Land Rover and a Supermarine fighter. Britain, it seems, has a lot to answer for. There’s also a bulldozer which had been converted into a tank, and various vans which had been used to storm the palace and so on.
    But, frankly, none of this matters alongside Arnol Rodríguez, who is a living, breathing relic from those revolutionary days.
    Along with eight other commandos, on the eve of the 1958 Cuban Grand Prix, he kidnapped Juan Manuel Fangio, who, at the time, was like Michael Schumacher, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna all rolled into one.
    At gunpoint they bundled him out of the Hotel Lincoln, into one of three waiting cars and took him across town to a rather ordinary two-storey house. Inside were a mother and two daughters, revolutionaries to the core, who led him upstairs and gave him steak and salad.
    The race went ahead without Fangio, but even the news that some hotheads had poured oil on the track, causing one car to kill six spectators, didn’t take the kidnapping off the front page.
    The world’s media was focused on this tiny island which had become known, though only dimly in Europe, as a sort of Monaco for Americans.
    It was a dream come true for Arnol and his merry gang, but even better news was just around the corner because when Fangio was released, he told waiting newsmen thathe had been treated well and that he sympathised with the cause of the rebels.
    Amazingly, the great racer stayed in touch with Arnol until the day he died. The kidnapper and the kidnappee became buddies. Weird, hey?
    It was certainly very weird to be sitting in the bedroom where Fangio was held, talking to Arnol and knowing that he’d gone on to be Cuba’s deputy minister for foreign affairs. I found myself wondering how Terry Waite would feel if one of his abductors were to be seen on TV every night meeting world statesmen like Clinton and Chirac and Gerry Adams.
    I didn’t exactly worry about it though, because I was beginning to formulate a plan. Whenever I visit a place, I like to bring some permanent reminder home and I was being thwarted at every turn in Havana.
    There is almost nothing in the shops, apart from cigars, which I don’t like, and shoddy Che Guevara T-shirts. I bought a photocopy of Che’s resignation letter to Fidel and even procured a bank note from 1960 signed by beardy himself.
    But I wanted something bigger… like a car.
    The streets really are chock-full of ageing classics which would, with a bit of attention, fetch all sorts of silly prices in the land of MTV.
    I’m told that in the current climate, it’s hard as hell to get them out but not impossible, and that was good enough. I mean, I’d just seen an Aston Martin DB4 slide by, and I wanted it.
    And that Cadillac over there. And the gullwingMercedes in that barn. And that Porsche speedster. No kidding, you don’t have to hunt for cars like this. They’re everywhere.
    There was even a Maserati which, said its owner, was one of only two ever made. He didn’t know what model it was, and the ravages of time had removed most of the clues, so I wasn’t sure whether he was bluffing or not.
    This car was a bare shell. It had no engine, no interior trim, no seats, no lights, nothing. But he wanted $50,000 for it, arguing that it had once been used by Mrs Batista, wife of the former president.
    This was the third car I’d see that day which had once been used by Mrs Batista, but it was not to be the last. I was shown four Jaguars that had belonged to Frank Sinatra and countless old wrecks which had been vomited in by the old drunk himself, Ernest Hemingway.
    Si Señor, I know it is a worthless piece of junk that is not even fit for the scrapyard but Ginger Rogers once owned it so I am asking for $100,000.
    And they’re not going to give up either, because the haggling has only just begun.
    Later, when countless Westerners have told them to get lost, they’ll sell for decent money, but not now.
    Che