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  I have been prone to exaggeration in the past but ask anyone on that plane what it was like and they’ll start to quiver. It was truly the most terrifying half hour of my life as the plane bucked, writhed, turned upside down and plummeted.

  I was forever being lifted from my seat, a worrying thing because I knew that just inches above my hair was a paddle fan. Would I be decapitated before we hit the deck? It seemed important.

  I really did think we were going to die, but somehow I managed a smile because I thought of my daughter, who was one at the time, growing up knowing her daddy had died in a Russian plane, over Cuba, in a thunderstorm. It’s a pretty cool way to go, let’s face it.

  We came out of the clouds at tree-top height and cruised at that level all the way to Havana with the lightning turning the wings blue every few seconds. And then we were back.

  And in need of a drink, which meant heading for the Cohiba nightclub. It is assumed that researchers on a television programme only have to find the stories, but that’s just part of it. They also have to find the best hotels and the best bars, and in Cuba Andy had excelled himself.

  Not only did he have an endless supply of stories that went beyond the realms of ‘amazing’ but also he knew where to take us after a near-death experience at 30 feet.

  Outside the Cohiba every night of the week hundreds and hundreds of girls hang around.

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Here are some more people waiting for the lift marshals to stop government-registered cars, so that they may get a lift home.’

  ‘Er no,’ replied Andy. ‘It’s not really like that here.’

  Puzzled, I stepped out from our Daihatsu Sportrak and was, within ten seconds, surrounded by a dozen or more pubescent girls who, for the most part, were wearing dental floss.

  My word, I thought, these Sportraks have some serious pulling power, but I was a trifle wide of the mark. It seems that they were only interested in my wallet which would enable them to get into the hottest night-spot in town.

  In return for the $10 entrance fee, I would have them as my escorts, at my beck and call, all week. Jesus.

  Even more amazingly, one chap turned up in a Lamborghini Diablo, which seemed like overkill. You can get your leg over if you have ten bucks, leave alone a £150,000 automobile.

  I was even on the receiving end of some smouldering come-ons when I tooled by on a bicycle which was powered by the motor from a fumigation pump. It wasn’t the bike. It wasn’t my good looks or flowing locks. It was my Visa card they wanted; that and a passport out of the place.

  Technically, the girls aren’t prostitutes in the accepted sense. In fact, they’ll go further for less, which proves really how screwed-up the Caribbean’s largest land-mass has become.

  I found myself wondering, as I strolled round the museum dedicated to the revolution, if Castro and Guevara could possibly have foreseen that one day their people would be asked, by their government, to eat grass.

  In fact, the museum is a hopeless waste of money in a country that doesn’t have any. Inside a large glass tomb, there’s the boat that brought the rebels over to Cuba, and outside, there are other mechanised pieces which have been 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 that he 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 gullwing Mercedes 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 Guevara’s car was different, though. Here was something that, we know, was used by someone famous. And here it was, after nine days of solid slog, emerging from the old town barn and seeing sunlight for the first time in twenty years.

  And there, coming from under the bonnet, were flames. It’s strange how one reacts in a situation like this: I did 100 metres in eight seconds as I ran to get the cameraman, so that we could record this momentous event for all time.

  Andy, mindful of the budget and how much it would cost us if the damned car burned out completely, behaved rather differently. He dived into a shop, which, miraculously, had some mineral water in the fridge. To the astonishment of the owner, he paid five bucks for one bottle and then poured the contents all over a car which, to the average Cuban, was worth rather less than that.

  It worked out quite well in fact. We got some pictures and Andy got the fire out before too much damage was done. The only trage
dy was that my drive in this important car was limited to one run down the Malecon seafront.

  Communism had wrecked a car. And it has certainly wrecked Cuba, but I guess we were quite lucky really. It never actually got round to wrecking a planet.

  Detroit

  Detroit today, no longer car capital of the world… more like the crime capital. Look at the sign in this car park — tailor-made to make you feel insecure and unwanted.

  Way back when, the good people of Detroit decided it would be a good thing to have a railway station. And this was not to be a platform with some geraniums on it either. No siree, you wouldn’t be able to find Bernard Cribbins having a chinwag with Jenny Agutter in the steam here. They wanted something big. Really big.

  And that’s what they got: the biggest, flashiest, tallest railway station the world had ever seen. The huge marble cavern of a concourse sat at the bottom of a twelve-storey skyscraper and backed on to no fewer than sixteen platforms.

  Unfortunately, Detroit became the car capital of the world and large, free-flowing urban interstates sprang up like mushrooms after a summer shower. They connected the new suburbs with the downtown auto factories and frankly, no one really needed the station any more.

  And so, it closed down.

  It’s still there, dominating the Detroit skyline, but today it’s smashed and broken. Every slab of marble is cracked, the concourse is littered with burned mattresses and the upper floors are said to be in an even worse state of repair.

  But no one is absolutely certain because Detroit’s railway station is at the end of Michigan Avenue and, as such, is at the epicentre of a gang war that measures 9.4 on the Richter scale.

  Rival outfits with silly names like the Ice Warriors fight for control of the high ground. And this is not Reggie and Ronnie Kray either. You can forget all about honour among thieves here. This is vicious like you simply would not believe.

  Every year 600 people are shot to death in Detroit and, in that railway station, I very nearly became one of them.

  The police had said we were mad to even think about going in there. ‘Not even that phoney accent is gonna save your ass. You go in there and you’ll come out in a body bag,’ said one cheery soul in a hexagonal hat.

  But frankly, the British perception of gangland violence is some spotty eleven-year-old with a penknife. We could handle these American pussies, no problem at all.

  It took about five minutes to find that we couldn’t. We’d just set the camera up when, from the minstrel’s gallery, a not-very-minstrel-like voice asked whether we were cops.

  We were then ordered to stand still and advised that, if we moved, we would be shot repeatedly. And then killed.

  I could have passed muster as a statue until, from behind one of the pillars, came this guy who was about fourteen feet tall and nine feet across. Also, he was brandishing what we later discovered was a ‘street sweeper’ — a machine gun that fires 12-bore shotgun cartridges.

  He frisked us, checked out the camera equipment, listened quite politely while we explained we were from the BBC and then said he was going to check us out.

  Now this puzzled me. I was still standing there, wondering if he had a hotline to John Birt, when a girl emerged from the shadows. She last knew what she was doing in 1976. Here was a person whose hair was green, whose nose sported sixteen silver rings and whose eyes had as much life to them as cardboard.

  Her first words were odd. ‘You’re that guy off Top Gear, yeah?’ ‘Um yes,’ I replied, wondering where my royalty cheque was if they were showing it in America. Actually, that’s a lie. I was really wondering where the lavatory was because I was about four seconds away from shitting myself.

  But then her face broke into a broad grin as she explained she’d once worked as a researcher on Newsnight and she ‘just luurrrved’ the BBC.

  Within seconds, we were joined by an army of gangland down-and-outs, all clamouring for an interview. Christian, the least stoned and most eloquent, explained that things are pretty bad in downtown Detroit these days.

  Had he been shot at? ‘What today? Yeah sure. I was down the gas station this morning and these guys came in. It was pretty ugly.’

  So we are in danger then? ‘You sure are. If they want your trucks, they’re going to take ’em. If they want your camera, they’re gonna take it. If they want your shoes, you’d better hand ’em over, because if you don’t the results could be disappointing. No… the results could be catastrophic.’

  We had a long chat, turned down several invitations to various parties and left. The police, waiting for us at the end of the drive, were impressed. ‘When you went in there we expected you to come out through an eleventh-floor window. How in the hell did you get talking to those guys? You ain’t even black,’ said one.

  Observant bunch, the Detroit cops.

  No, they really are. Two days later, we were being driven round an area of the city called Brush which had obviously just been on the receiving end of a B-52 strike. Not a single house was in one piece. Every car in every street was a wreck.

  There’d been a drive-by shooting, two people were dead and our chauffeurs were out looking for suspects. It’s OK, that’s what they were paid to do. They were policemenists.

  We were chatting about this and that, about how no one has a job because there are no jobs to be had, when one of them, Hal, suddenly asked if we’d like to see an arrest.

  In the blink of an eye, the car had stopped, and two fifteen-year-olds were spread-eagled on the bonnet.

  This would have made good footage but sadly, the Chevvy had child locks and we couldn’t get out without scrabbling over the front seats and tumbling into the street with my legs tangled up in the umbilical cord that links the camera to the sound equipment.

  By the time we were ready to roll, Hal had pulled a small gun and some drugs from the suspects and radioed for back-up… which arrived just as the crowd started throwing stones at us.

  Another guy was arrested and as he lay on the ground, his head pinned to the road by Hal’s shoe, his friend told cameraman Keith Schofield, ‘Get that on your camcorder, Johnnie Fucking Video.’

  This was getting ugly and we already knew that everyone was packing heat. You can buy a gun in Detroit for less than half a dozen tomatoes and the statistics show that a gun is a lot more useful.

  I must confess that I kept staring at the tiny pistol that had been confiscated earlier and was now lying on the passenger seat of the police car. Was it loaded? Where was the safety catch? Had anyone in the crowd started firing, you should be in no doubt that I’d have fired back.

  And I’m the guy who had to lie in a cold room for three days after I once shot a sparrow with an air rifle.

  Happily, we emerged from the confrontation in one piece, even though our Chrysler Town and Country people carrier had taken a direct hit.

  Compared to Detroit, the rest of America is Trumpton. You ask an American if he’s ever been there and he’ll be too flabbergasted to answer. You can buy T-shirts elsewhere in the States which say things like ‘Don’t Mess With Me. I Have Friends In Detroit’ or ‘DETROIT — Where The Weak Are Killed And Eaten’.

  That’s strange because, just 30 years ago, Detroit was the most vibrant city America had ever seen. The people were rich. The factories were humming. You could hear the buzz all round the world. So what turned the motor capital of the world into the murder capital of the world?

  Well, way back at the dawn of automotive time, and seemingly quite by chance, a number of individuals set up shop in and around De Troit (it used to be French) making cars. A great many covered wagons had been built there and the city simply added the newfangled internal combustion engine.

  This city was home base to Lincoln, Cadillac, Pontiac, Chevrolet, Ford, Mercury, Chrysler, Hudson, Plymouth, Buick, Dodge, Packard and Oldsmobile. It was The Motor City.

  There were more car-makers than people and, to attract workers from elsewhere in the States, the pay was high. By the late fift
ies, the average industrial wage rate in America was $1.50 an hour but in Detroit they were getting $3.

  You could start work in one factory on a Monday morning and, if you didn’t like it, catch the afternoon shift in another later that day.

  Demand was phenomenal, too. These were the US boom years, before the oil crisis, Vietnam and Watergate, and everyone wanted a car: a big one with a V8 engine from Detroit. In the fifties and sixties, 97 per cent of all cars sold in America were made in America.

  No car sums up the times better than the original 1964 Mustang. This two-door saloon was an adventurous departure, not only for Ford but for the whole car industry.

  Until the Mustang came along, every car had a specific engine and a specific level of luxury. There was no choice. But with the ‘pony car’, as it became known, customers could choose what motor they wanted and even what body style — two-door saloon or convertible.

  And there was an options list. You could go for bucket seats, for instance, or a limited slip differential or a rev counter. It could be a 6-cylinder shopping car or a V8 wind-in-the-hair tyre-shredder.

  Ford guessed they were on to something with this new idea and reckoned they’d sell 100,000 Mustangs in the first twelve months. In fact, they sold 680,000 making it the fastest-selling car of all time — a record that’s never been beaten.

  But today, the only records being made are crime statistics.

  So what went wrong? Well, most importantly, there was the oil crisis which made people slightly less willing to run a V8 with its Oliver-Reedesque thirst. They wanted smaller engines and turned their attention to the newfangled Japanese offerings.

  And hey, these cars never broke down, so even when the oil problem went away many stuck with Honda and Datsun and Toyota.

  Then there was assembly-line automation, which was bad enough, but cheap land prices didn’t help either.

  When the car company wanted to update a factory, it didn’t simply put in a robot here and a conveyor belt there. No, it shut up shop completely and built a new plant, usually out of town where land was cheaper.