Did you know my dad was born and raised in Havana? It’s true. I’m technically half-Cuban. But even if my dad didn’t spend his childhood years tromping around Havana and eating sugar cane right out of the fields, I’d still be fascinated by Cuba’s car culture, as it dovetails so well with my own preferences: weird old crapboxes, kept barely running with wire, scraps, and wildly clever acts of improvisation. There’s a really impressive act of Cuban vehicular improvisation that’s getting attention now, and it’s one that’s both a very reasonable response to a looming crisis, and one that pulls from a long history of people making the best with what they have.
Fundamentally, it’s about a man converting his Polski Fiat 126 to run on charcoal.
Well, more accurately, he converted the little rear-engined Fiat to run on something variously known as woodgas or producer gas, which is a melange of (in descending order) nitrogen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and oxygen. Of those gases, two are actually combustible in an internal combustion engine, and one helps make combustion happen, so it’s not exactly a power-dense fuel, but when you don’t have access to gasoline, it’s much better than nothing.
It’s exactly that sort of situation – better than nothing – where woodgas generators thrive. That would include the current situation in Cuba, which is under a United States-led oil blockade, and, perhaps most famously, situations like World War II, which is when woodgas-converted vehicles experienced their biggest heyday.
You may have seen pictures like the one above of a wood-gasifier-equipped Volkswagen from WWII, and there were thousands and thousands of other such converted vehicles all across Europe, including machines like tractors and city buses.
Wood gasification equipment is cumbersome and bulky, requiring big hoppers to store the fuel, whether it’s wood chips or charcoal or similar sorts of solid stock, and then vessels to “cook” the fuel in low-oxygen conditions to extract the combustible gases, and all of the required plumbing and filtering and cooling systems that are associated with getting the fuel to the engine to burn.
Considering how clunky all this is, essentially building a tiny fuel refinery into your car, it’s kind of amazing how elegant some conversions managed to be, like this 1938 Citroën 11:
The use of woodgas or producer gas for operating vehicles has always been a sort of viable last-resort, with organizations like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) even publishing conversion guides as recently as 1989, which could help people convert vehicles in the event of an extended fuel supply emergency.
Let’s get back to our resourceful Cuban inventor who is making this old but reliable technology relevant again. His name is Juan Carlos Pino, he’s 56 and lives in the small town of Aguacate. Frustrated by the oil blockade making fuel expensive and rare, he adapted his 1980 Polski Fiat to use a wood gasifier, and the little car’s 652cc inline-twin now burns that fuel. Woodgas is not exactly a performance fuel, so it’s unlikely the Fiat is still making its original ravenous 24 horsepower as it did on gasoline, but, and this is what matters, it’s still self-propelled.
Here’s a good video about the project:
As you can see, the equipment to make this work is bulky and takes up a lot of room on the car; Pino has done a good job of integrating the major components, with the large filter (made from a milk jug and full of old clothes) and the cylindrical burner/hopper (made from an old propane tank) all hang off the back, making the plumbing to the rear engine nice and short.
I’d also like to point out that Pino’s Fiat seems to be in very good condition overall; he also seems to have done some tasteful customizations on the inside, making what looks to be a nice wood-accented dashboard, and it’s worth noting that the seats and headliner are in excellent shape. This is a nice little 126!
It’s not clear if the underhood trunk area has been used for any gas cooling or other needs, but I don’t see any plumbing coming from there, suggesting that all of the equipment for the conversion is hanging off the back there.
I’m also curious about those window stickers that look like the Apple logo stickers you get with an iPhone or Macbook; you can see them on the rear side window here:
They have little symbols on them, and a star above; is that some Cuban thing?
It’s really one of the tidiest and most compact gasifier setups I’ve seen; just to compare, here’s another homebuilt woodgas conversion on a Ford truck:
Sure, that’s a much bigger vehicle with a whole truck bed to use, but it’s still impressive how compact Pino’s setup is. Pino’s neighbors people who see the Fiat roaming around town are very impressed. He took it on a roughly 50 mile test run and achieved speeds of about 45 mph at the peak, which, considering that the other option is not moving, is great.
I’ll be curious to see if these conversions become more common as the lack of fuel continues; it’s not unprecedented to think vehicles could start being converted on larger scales. There’s at least one contemporary example of a country that still makes extensive use of woodgas vehicles to this day, North Korea, where it’s often used to power rural trucks and farm equipment.
Pino’s conversion is a smart response to a difficult situation. He’s adapting his car to make do with what he actually has available, and as a result can still drive, perhaps a bit slower and with a loss of convenience, but he’s still driving, and that’s what matters.
Top graphic images: YouTube; DepositPhotos.com
Interesting!
A couple of gassifiers are on my todo list.
A cold one from yard and stable waste. And a hot one like this from wood.
Theory for making one is easy enough. Making a good one seems to be tough though. And you would have to deal with the tar.
“Look at those poor Cubans, suffering under a communist regime. Let’s make their lives much worse!”
-Uncle Sam
I’ve always admired the innovative nature of Cubans. The decades long embargo of Cuba makes absolutely zero sense and is a nostalgic holdover from the Cold War. It’s utter nonsense perpetuated by influential Cuban Americans and others. It may have had some hope SIXTY FOUR FREAKIN’ years ago but it makes zero sense now, particularly given the US’s tolerance for despots and oppressive non-democratic regimes around the world.
Oh, and expect another “excursion” on the shores of Cuba just as soon as Marco Ruby-slippers-are-too-big-o and Kegsbreath can convince Dear Leader to invade another country.
Side note: the irony of the smiling guy in the background of the video wearing a US flag shirt…
I’ll send this whole thread to the tech team and see if we can look into it! Thank you.
Did you mean to post this comment on the thread I opened below?
Jason, at first I thought that you were playing a 3D level or chess that I wasn’t grasping with your reply… until I realized that you meant to respond to Kurt below.
If I had the money to create a car company, the Cubans would be my first choice for consultation on the design, given that my goal would be to build a car that can last as long as possible, as inexpensively as possible, and to be repaired back to reliable and usable condition with as little as possible. Cubans likely have the best first-hand experience on Earth with regard to what is needed to keep an old vehicle running reliably with no access to resources, although the Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans, and Yemenis would probably give them a good run for the money..
Then, apply these lessons to EV tech, in a low-mass, aerodynamically-efficient package. Lets make driving a car on a per mile basis CHEAPER than taking the bus and as close to operating a bicycle as can be done. And have that be true for high performance sports cars as well. Modern vehicles consume at least 2x as much energy as they should for the same level of comfort, performance, usability and application. If anyone knows how to stop wasting peoples’ money, and make due with a lot less, it’s the Cubans.
My engineering senior design project was revamping a previously built gasifier system. It takes a surprising amount of fuel mass to generate even 20hp in an unmodified gasoline engine. The reactor is also prone to explosion if you lose draft or have flameout, something I found out the hard way (with only injury being burnt eyebrows luckily).
The absolute key is filtering, especially if using particularly dirty fuel sources (pine wood chips). One aspect of the project was rebuilding the dyno engine, as the previous team fouled the cylinders with tar and carbon so badly it bent valves and pushrods.
I’m posting this comment here because I’m hoping that someone from the team reads it.
I’m reading your website from my smartphone. It’s a little bit old (iPhone 13), but it works perfectly well, except on your website. As soon as I’m accessing your site and opening pages, it starts slowing down, and also getting warm in my hand. It’s usually so bad that I end up closing it after having read one or two articles. When I’m typing a comment, it can get too slow to continue typing: I’m talking several seconds of delay between typing something and seeing it appear on the screen. That’s why I’ve resorted to typing the comment in a different app and copy/paste it into the comment field. Also, the website closes and reloads automatically and shows a generic message saying that the page had to be reloaded because of an error (iOS Safari). Once finished, I have to make sure that the tab with your website is closed, and once it is closed, the phone starts working fine again and cooling down quickly.
Again, this happens exclusively on your website, and one other site: I had similar problems with the website bloodyelbow.com (a MMA website), but they managed to fix it at least partially: it still uses a lot of ressources (phone gets warm) and reloads the page occasionally, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it was a couple of years ago.
Relevant information: iPhone 13 mini, OS up to date, using the built-in browser (Safari). Battery allows for peak performance capability.
Yeah, likewise here! Been having the exact same problems with the Autopian (as well as the Old Site which I rarely if ever visit anymore because of this very issue) with my Samsung Galaxy S10e (I know, my phone is ancient!!) which gets so damn hot I have to turn it off. It’s the worst whenever I try to write and post a comment; two weeks ago I finally just gave up and started using the memo app on the phone to write comments and using the copy/paste functions. Woe is me whenever I try to correct a typo once I’ve posted the comment, lol.
I’d try using Blokada (the free sideloaded version) on your S10e. I had similar problems on my S10e, especially with an older version of the German lighting site and the ad blocker improved speed and usability. The only thing that didn’t work were the used car polls. I still sometimes run Blokada on my Galaxy A14, but it’s less of a problem and Torch and Tracy need to eat
This is almost certainly because of ads. The bits of JavaScript that control the display of ads are often terrible, the code is poorly written and inefficient. It works better on some platforms than others, and I’d guess this issue is specific to WordPress sites.
There’s not a whole lot the Autopian can do about it unfortunately. There’s no incentive for the ad providers to write better code.
I’m wondering why it’s only on this site? I occasionally read other automotive sites, like roadandtrack and thedrive, and surely they run ads that appear here as well? Yet I never had a performance problem while reading those other sites, so I’m just not sure if it’s only because of the ads. Also, didn’t the autopian recently change their ad provider? I didn’t notice any difference at all.
While not a bullet proof solution, I’ve found that using Edge as my browser avoids this on most but not all websites that safari, chrome, or firefox struggle with. (Feels weird to me that MS made the best overall browser for iOS) My phone’s even older, a 12 mini, however I’ve also been a member for about a year and a half so I have no idea what it’s currently like with ads here.
I gave up on reading the old site around 2018 due to having the same issue but that was on my work Linux computer not supporting random codecs used by ads so it just keeps trying to reload itself consuming about 1GB per second of RAM until the workstation effectively becomes unusable. It was also unusable on my phone so I just gave up on it.
So, as a member, eg without ads, does the site work well with Safari? Or do you still have to use Edge?
I honestly don’t know as I switched to using edge as my default before becoming a member and only use Safari a handful of times a year on websites that require it. The switch wasn’t made as a result of this site but others that were even more hostile at the time.
Chrome reports that this page is consuming 571mb of RAM. By contrast, Google News is using 120mb. So this site is very script heavy.
It isn’t just you or a problem with smartphones.
I have also taken to cutting and pasting comments because typing is so delayed when attempting to use the browser. The site also self closes as of last week with a weird message. (Something like “Don’t want to go back to work – Explore these rabbit holes”.)
We had a WW2 German military vet professor in college and he described their wood powered vehicles on the eastern front. It wasn’t until the internet that I saw images of what he was talking about.
The FIAT 126 also runs on Kerosene as proven by old mate Garbage Time with his cromulent little Maluch named Tony Kowalski . For USA viewsers Bunnings = Home Depot. Anyone else on here a fan of Garbage Times yelling hands POV videos?
My neighbor wondered aloud how much more gasoline would cost if Cuba were using some of the world’s (slightly) limited supply, and then how anyone there would be able to afford to buy any of it… he’s clearly a bit weird.
Kudos to the Cubans for being resourceful. They make brake fluid out of shampoo and brown sugar.
I’m grateful for the glimmer of sunshine in an otherwise, unnecessarily cruel, situation that has been imposed upon the people of Cuba.
Finally – A seriously good excuse to go Rollin’ Coal.
This article caused me to educate myself on the US embargo against Cuba. (Thanks Torch!) It was in existence 12 years before I was born. It’s a failed policy by any standard, whether or not you agree with the reasons it was originally implemented. I applaud the people of Cuba for their ingenuity and intrepid spirits.
I don’t think its a controversial opinion to say that it has been a complete failure, or, even really an opinion at all. Any effect the embargo might have had was completely mitigated by Cuba’s close economic relationship with the Soviet Union for 30 years, so it didn’t do anything at all during that time, then, if it was going to work at all, it would have done so in the 1990s after the USSR collapsed. The only people it harms are ordinary, average Cubans, not the elites at the top. Sandro Castro is able to easily charge his iPhone and Instagram from poolside at his government villa, and Miguel Diaz Canel can get into a fully gassed-up limo and go anywhere he wants. Cuba still produces about 30,000 barrels of their own oil per day, that’s not much, but its enough to keep their government and military more or less functioning, they’re not going anywhere, its the average people that are forced to do without.
Yeah, I really didn’t know anything about it, except that it existed and had something to do with communism and Castro. I’m glad I looked it up. Thanks for the additional context.
Since you seem in the know, do regular Cubans get mad that their leaders can do whatever they want but leave the masses in poverty? Why haven’t they taken care of that particular problem?
I’d say most of them have more pressing concerns just surviving at the moment. But, even if there was a will for political change, how the hell would they do that? There’s no organized opposition of any kind, no freedom of association, nobody’s armed, what can a small disorganized group really do? Iran had mass protests in major cities all over the place for weeks and weeks, with government buildings seized and a death toll well into the thousands, and their regime is still firmly intact.
At any rate, Cuba has traditionally used emigration as a safety “pressure release” valve, unlike many other Communist countries historically, they’re perfectly fine with people leaving and even encourage it. Most of the most disgruntled/discontented citizens and regime opponents already left a long time ago
Good to know, a well written response.
Most Cubans know that the situation is caused by US policy first and foremost, and changing their government isn’t actually going to improve their long-term situation that much; see how Haiti and Puerto Rico are doing.
If you are a US citizen, one can ask you the same thing.
If we are being realistic for the last 20 years, the average American citizen has a quality of life exceeding every human being from before 1940 to the dawn of mankind. Seriously our lives are so freaking easy, safe and comfortable on a historical perspective anyone except kings would have a hard time even imagining it. While the average Cuban is still doing well historically I doubt they are doing as well as even “poor” Americans.
I have three cars, a house that’s over three times bigger than the one my grandfather was born in and everyday comforts for my family of 5 and that’s on a household budget thats below the median. I have too much to lose in a rebellion.
And to think this is all started way back when someone tinted a unnatural shade of orange called someone else lil hands so now lil hands is taking it out on the vast majority of poor people of Cuba who just want to watch their families grow up.
Just like the 66 percent of people in the USA that dont want this nonsense to go on anymore either.
Theres more to it of course but I prefer this version best.
This is great ingenuity, as well as a big fat Cubano middle finger to Trump.
I think the citizens of Cuba are the “hold my cerveza” world champions. Tell them they can’t, and, goddamit, they will.
Once again the US creates a humanitarian disaster in Cuba on purpose, once again Cubans shrug it off.
Seriously America, fuck all the way off. The entire rest of the world is sick of you.
Just realize most Americans (at least on this site) feel the same about the Government.
Has the time come for the guillotines yet?
I’d be content with the entire administration spending the rest of their days in CECOT.
Unfortunately if and when they do, it’ll be the wrong side using them.
Based on how there are STILL Republicans getting re-elected in recent special elections and given the level of support the Republicans STILL have according to recent polls, I’d say not nearly enough Americans are disgusted with the Republicans or the Trump gang.
Gerrymandering is massive and both the state and local level. The vast majority of elections happen in the primary not general election.
What is amazing is the number of “safe” special elections Republicans have been losing.
Eh, no. The humanitarian disaster was caused by communism alone. The only country that had an embargo on Cuba is the US. Cuba could still trade with the rest of the world, and they did. But the regime was corrupt and incompetent, and deadly enough to prevent any change.
As much as I despise the orange russian puppet, the fate of Cubans was built by the Castro dictatorship and their kin.
Corrupt and incompetent, but still manage to deliver better access to healthcare and education than the US does.
And no, the current humanitarian disaster is 100% manufactured by US policy. There are zero other factors. The US decided to be cruel to Cuba, full stop.
Nope. Education is crumbling, and healthcare is reasonable only for tourists and the ruling elite, not for the regular guy. Ask anybody on a street (far away from the party thugs, of course).
And nope again. They were starving as far as 1987, when the USSR was still was a thing and exchanged a lot of stuff into Cuba. Then russia filled that role, and Mexico and the gulf states to some extent.
The only barrier that the US set was for trade with the US itself. Cuba could be well off trading with the rest of the world if it wasn’t for communism.
My mom was sort of socialist until we visited almost 40 years ago. The things we saw and heard convinced her otherwise. Starvation is an exageration, I meant not enough proteins for adult people and an excess of carbs. Plain malnutrition in 1987, just like the rest of Central America (where I also lived).
This is one of those tropes that makes its way around without much in the way of critical discussion or even understanding.
No, Cuba definitely does not deliver better healthcare. Unless you want to define “better” to include things like “imprisoning people with HIV” or “not counting stillborn births to juke the stats.” And because I’m big on sourcing, some links:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/03/26/471765424/love-loss-and-beauty-pageants-inside-a-cuban-hiv-sanitarium
https://academic.oup.com/heapol/article/33/6/755/5035051
While I’m not an expert on Cuba, I am (to some degree) on the neighboring island of Haiti. Both have the same problem, to wit: A capital (Port-au-Prince) that Westerners visit and from which decisions are made and in which pageantry sufficient to be convincing is conducted, and a desperately poor, ignored, impoverished, and repressed out-class in the ring area around the capital and areas outside of it. That’s why the font of every Haitian revolution is usually outside Port-au-Prince, and it’s why Americans who visit Cuba rarely see anything outside Havana.
Incidentally, all of this can be laid at the feet of the Castro regime. Haiti – despite having more heads of state than almost any other nation in the past hundred years – has been unable to chart a path to prosperity. Cuba, despite having, in effect, two or three (depending on how one wishes to count Castros) in the past 65 years, has found itself mired in the same problem – namely, that any hard currency or NGO dollars are seized by the state almost upon arrival, and little is done by the regime(s) to actually improve the state of their citizenry. Thus, individuals chart their own paths to economic advantage either through criminality (haitian gangs) or by becoming members of the regime that can intercept foreign money (Cuba).
Cuba was the richest country in the Caribbean before Castro. The US embargo is part of the problem, but the majority of the economic failure lies firmly in the hands of the Castros.
I always figured that “Torchinski” was a Cuban name.
When I headed up the tooling department for a thermoforming plant, I expressed concerns to the HR department with the quality of trainees they were hiring. They agreed that I would interview any new candidates. The first candidate was born and raised in Cuba, got U.S. citizenship, married, one kid. We hit it off immediately, with him telling me of sledgehammering a bow back into a flattened leaf spring on soft ground! He had experience in injection molding, and became my replacement when I became the production planner.
Honestly I think averaging 45mph for 50 miles in a stock Fiat 126 would be a solid acheivement. It also looks like this entire conversion might be completely reversible.
¡Felicidades Camarada!
That’s awesome and ingenious, in a weird way the old car being so simple makes this possible. Would this even work on a modern engine with Direct Injection, turbos, etc!
Still want to visit Cuba before it becomes another Aruba tourist trap…
At first I was going to say there is no way this would work with something modern. But if you tuned it right direct injection just might work. Maybe if you had a reservoir to store the gas before combustion. The turbo though, someone more versed in turbos will have to answer that.
Can’t forget about this article from the old site:
https://www.jalopnik.com/this-el-camino-runs-on-burning-wood-5792023/
“Juha Sipilä’s “El Kamina” — “kamiina” means “stove” in Finnish — was built to highlight the potential for biofuels. The wood gas system is similar to ones that were widespread in Europe during World War II when oil was scarce. While loading chunks of wood into a tank seems like a mideval form of combustion, a properly engineered system can burn cleaner than a gasoline engine and travel a decent distance.
The El Kamina’s system can power the car about 125 miles on a full 175-pound tank of wood chips, but the car itself could carry enough wood for 800 miles. While the wood gas and scrubbing system boosts the weight of the Kamina to 4,400 lbs., it can still manage a top speed of 87 mph. The system can also combine gasoline with wood gas in the 400-cubic-inch Chevy V8.”
Plus, it’s an El Camino!
I made my second trip to Cuba in December. The people are the most industrious I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet. They can literally make something out of nothing on top of being kind and welcoming to complete strangers.
I’ve watched that show called Cuban Chrome and it’s very interesting how they restore cars…I recommend it
Are we certain that’s not a home-built fusion reactor?
Senor Fusion
Careful what you say there. We don’t want to lose Juan Carlo, or anyone else due to some stupid preemptive air strike because of some weird “misunderstanding.”
Thankful he has not built a boat with such a source of fuel for obvious reasons.
Winning so bigly…since 2025
I worked with a Peruvian electrical engineer that had spent time in Cuba. He always had stories of wild things they would make from trash. Figured out how to get c band satellite signals with trash. Various parts and issues always solved with trash. From what I’ve seen the NK systems are cleaner but their old cccp trucks have the space for the vessels. Plus they probably have a factory making the things. They were running out of trees in some areas partly because of it.
We have been putting the squeeze on Cuba for over 60 years and they always figure it out. Farming with no fertilizer, cars with no parts, industry with no computers, and they still deliver and provide at a level that often matches the products and services from other places. I’m sure this mans dash and head liner are made buy hand local and at a level of finish that you can’t easily buy in many places.
I long for the day that people in charge realize they don’t always have the leverage they think they do. Good on this guy for making it work and keeping his car running for himself. I would hope I could do as well in the same situation.
Necessity is the mother of invention. And therein lies the irony. When this embargo ends all those skilled tradespeople making something out of nothing will be replaced with crap from Amazon.
I recall Jason mentioning his Cuban heritage around the time the other site got bought by Telemundo.