Rusty But Trusty

The team at RustyButTrusty (okay, it’s a team of one, plus the fiance) has just returned from Peru, and we thought it would be interesting to share some of the vehicles still in daily use, some even earning their keep as taxis. A couple of interesting things I noticed:

• There are a fair amount of classics in daily use. Some of the cars I saw but was not able to catch on camera include various older Opels, many Peugeot 404s and a couple of 504 wagons, first-generation European Ford Escorts, late 60s Hillman Hunter sedans and wagons, and a Fiat 1500 sedan. Beetles are also dead-common, and I even spotted a couple that appeared to have 4-doors. There are also many oddball Japanese sedans sporting frameless doors and coupe-like rooflines – and Japanese cars old and new are what dominate the street there.
• Cross-ply tires are still in use. I had no idea they were used except for collector cars, and I’m not sure why they’re on cars here – they must be more affordable.
• This is maybe less surprising, but older cars are more common in some cities than others. While we saw few old cars in Cuzco, wealthier cities such as Arequipa and Lima seemed to have more. Trujillo disproved my theory about greater wealth being correlated to higher survival rates, since Trujillo was apparently less, but has many older cars.

Anyway, let’s move on to some of the snaps I did get:

Typical street scene in Arequipa. This was worse than usual since there was a strike around the Plaza de Armas, so all the streets a block off of the plaza were closed. You can see most of the taxis here are Daewoo Ticos – if you do a Google search for those, one of the first results will explain why I refused to ride in a Tico taxi. Other cars put into taxi duty included Toyota Proboxes & Corollas, compact Nissan wagons, Nissan Micras, a Geo Metro, a Renault 5, various old American boats, and pretty much anything else with 4 seats.

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