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Philadelphia car museum links Cubans and Americans

Traveling outside Cuba for the first time, Armando Lorenzo Munnet was moved to tears Wednesday by the warm welcome he received at the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum, an astonishing array of world-famous race cars on exhibit near Philadelphia International Airport.

Armando Lorenzo Munnet (right), who stars in the documentary "Havana Motor Club," with Frederick Simeone, founder of the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum. The film is about drag racing in Cuba. (ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer)
Armando Lorenzo Munnet (right), who stars in the documentary "Havana Motor Club," with Frederick Simeone, founder of the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum. The film is about drag racing in Cuba. (ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer)Read more

Traveling outside Cuba for the first time, Armando Lorenzo Munnet was moved to tears Wednesday by the warm welcome he received at the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum, an astonishing array of world-famous race cars on exhibit near Philadelphia International Airport.

Munnet, 42, a resourceful car mechanic, is one of the stars of Havana Motor Club, a documentary about drag racing in Cuba that had its world premiere in New York City last week.

"Already, I am overwhelmed," said Munnet, who pointed to the hairs bristling on his forearm as he entered the hangar-like building where dozens of champion cars, dating back a century, are on permanent display.

"God has granted me the gift to be able to come here and see all of this," he said, eyes welling. He spoke in Spanish through an interpreter.

As the United States and Cuba take tentative steps to normalize diplomatic relations, severed a half-century ago after the island nation's communist revolution, people-to-people contacts between ordinary Americans and Cubans are early signs of a possible rapprochement.

"We are not interested in imperialism or socialism," said Marcel Piedra Cervantes, 30, the documentary's in-country Cuban producer, who accompanied Munnet. "We just want to live our lives."

The 90-minute film, directed by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and shot by Zelmira Gainza, tells of Cuba's vibrant underground community of drag racers and their quest to hold the country's first officially sanctioned race since the revolution. Deemed an elitist sport that does not contribute to the overall welfare of the masses, car racing in Cuba has mostly taken place illicitly on the streets, with drivers risking jail and confiscation of vehicles.

The film explores how recent reforms in Cuba - permission to own property and small businesses, along with more contact with tourists and other foreigners - have affected the lives of a half-dozen racers and their families.

One driver enlists the help of a Cuban American patron in Miami to bring in parts for his modern Porsche.

Munnet, a fierce competitor, uses ingenuity and handmade parts to turn his dull black 1956 Ford, which he nicknamed Bucephalus, after Alexander the Great's horse, into a formidable racing machine.

Another racer ponders whether to participate or sell his car's motor in order to be able to flee Cuba on a raft headed for Florida.

Vivid cinematography and suspenseful pacing demonstrate why the film was chosen for screening this year at the Tribeca Film Festival. The filmmakers also are exploring the possibility of a showing at the museum.

Instrumental in organizing the Cubans' visit to Philadelphia were Rick Shnitzler and John Dowlin, cofounders of TailLight Diplomacy, a nonprofit founded in Philadelphia in 2000 in the belief that devotion to the vintage "Yanktanks" that still ply the roads of Cuba can be a catalyst for groundbreaking cultural exchanges.

Another of the organizers is Enrique Sacerio-Gari, a Bryn Mawr College professor of Hispanic-American studies who was born in Cuba in 1945 and moved with his parents to the United States in 1959.

Reflecting on Munnet's visit, Sacerio-Gari said he was uplifted.

"When you have face-to-face encounters - a bit of humanity, if you will - the impediments that have been structured by confrontation begin to fade," he said, "making room for a willingness to change the situation."

Frederick Simeone, 78, the retired neurosurgeon who created the museum six years ago, led the tour.

"I hoped for this [interaction] a long time ago," he said.

"A wonderful guy like him," said Simeone, throwing an arm around Munnet, "there is no reason why I should not be able to see his cars, and for him to see mine, any time we want."

Among the most moving moments for Munnet, whose right wrist is tattooed with a flaming skull atop crossed crescent wrenches, was when he was allowed to climb over the low wall around a red Maserati that raced in Cuba in 1956 in the Havana 500. He leaned in, grinned, and put one hand on the steering wheel.

Making sure to get a selfie with the famous car, he said he was amazed that he could reach out and touch part of Cuba's history here.

As the visit wound down, Simeone reached into the museum's gift shop and gave Munnet a lavish coffee-table book about the collection, titled Spirit of Competition.

"I was raised to think 'the United States vs. Cuba; Cuba vs. the United States,' " Munnet said. "But we are all human beings who should unite for the good of the people."

Earlier, as he went from car to car like a kid in a candy store, he joked, "Yo duermo aqui."

"I'd be happy to sleep here."

215-854-2541 @MichaelMatza1