For the first time in more than 50 years, the Cuban government began selling new and used vehicles last week to anyone with the money to buy one. And as crowds gathered at state-owned car lots in Havana to check out the inventory, a consensus quickly emerged.
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.
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