The cars on sale had either been priced by callous, greedy idiots, or the Cuban government had become the most incompetent automobile retailer in the world.
How else to explain 2013 Peugeot sedans priced at more than $250,000 — seven or eight times their retail value in Europe?
Or used vehicles like a 2010 Volkswagen Passat offered at $70,000?
Even Chinese-made Geelys — some of the world’s cheapest cars — are listed at more than $30,000, somehow increasing in value after absorbing years of abuse as tourist rentals on Cuba’s pothole-rotted roads.
All of this is especially baffling in a country with miserable public transportation and average state salaries stuck at $20 a month.
“A doctor! Someone call a doctor!” shouted one man, feigning a heart attack, as he read the list of used vehicle prices aloud to rounds of laughter at a government car lot in Havana’s Miramar neighborhood.
Because the communist government often neglects to explain the reasoning behind some of its more extreme measures, there’s been little else for Cubans to do but joke in public as they seethe in private.