Cuba recently relaxed its car purchase laws so that more new cars could invade its notoriously old car laden streets. And over the first six months of the year, a bunch of new cars were sold. Literally. 50 were sold. Wow.
The problem that Cuba faces is a whopping 400 percent increase in pricing from standard, so a car like a Kia Rio, that is about $13,000 in the USA is about $42,000 in Cuba.
Ok, expensive, but still doable, right? Not really. Cubans make about $20 a month. They'd need to work multiple lifetimes to just afford a Kia. Literally. Think about this, a Peugeot 508, a family sedan, is $262,000 in Cuba. A McLaren 650S is $265,000 in America. Please consider that for a minute.
So the fact that 50 cars were sold is kind of staggering, though it appears that most were used cars since the average transaction cost was less than $25,000. So Cuba might have opened up its car market to new cars, but it's done so in a way that doesn't encourage the sale of them at all. Looks like the free market hasn't invaded after all.