HAVANA (AP) — It's not your typical used car lot.
Just steps from the Florida Straits, dozens of vehicles sit covered in grime and baking in the Caribbean sun. An elderly security guard slumps in a sleepy waiting area, and customers are nowhere to be seen.
A price list hanging on the green chain-link fence hints at why: $85,000 for a 6-year-old Peugeot compact; $46,000 for a tiny 2008 Citroen C3 hatchback that would cost less than a third of that in Europe. Elsewhere, a larger, new Peugeot 508 lists for $262,000, five times its price in Britain — and more than a millennium worth of paychecks in Cuba, where wages average about $20 a month.
The euphoria that greeted a January reform that lets Cubans buy vehicles from the government without a special permit for the first time in decades turned to anger when the prices were posted. When authorities announced recently that just 50 cars had rolled off the lots of state-run dealerships in the first half-year, bringing in $1.3 million in sales, it was tempting to call the policy a failure.
But analysts say it seems the measure was designed to work that way.
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