Cuba: Why it's wrong to mourn passing of island's old US cars

VINTAGE American cars are as synonymous with Cuba as salsa music and a well-rolled cigar. But sweeping changes to the country's import laws may have spelled the beginning of the end for the country's fleet of ancient Studebakers and Oldsmobiles.

For almost 50 years, Havana's streets have been jammed with the kind of big, chrome-covered cars that are consigned to museums and collectors' garages elsewhere in the world. They were made prior to the 1959 revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power. Cubans were forced to keep them on the road due to "tight domestic controls and US sanctions" that prevented most people from buying imported vehicles The Guardian reports.

But in the latest of a series of economic reforms, the council of ministers headed by Raul Castro, Fidel's brother, has opened up the car market to all citizens". As a result, one of Cuba's "most distinctive anachronisms" is under threat.

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While foreign tourists may mourn the disappearance of the ancient cars, they're missing the point, writes The Guardian's Mark Wallace. He says the vehicles are "icons of oppression" that should be scrapped.

Describing their demise as a tragedy is "patronising nonsense," writes Wallace. If Cubans had the choice they would have consigned them to the scrap heap years ago. The only reason they didn't is that "the communist dictatorship that rules them did not allow it".

Wallace adds: "The motor museum driving Cuba's roads each day might seem quaint to tourists, who can go back to their air-conditioned, reliable and safe modern cars when their holiday is over – in reality the sight is a symptom of the way in which dictatorship runs down the lives of those forced to labour beneath it."

Many Cubans are certainly keen to upgrade their cars. But as AP reports, the price of new imported vehicles may prevent many of them doing so. When prospective buyers visited Havana's car showrooms on Friday – the first day the new import laws came into force – they found "sharply hiked prices, some of them light years beyond all but the most well-heeled islanders", AP says.

A new Kia Rio hatchback that costs $13,600 in the US will cost a Cuban motorist $42,000. Meanwhile, a Peugeot 508 sedan, the most luxurious of which lists for the equivalent of about $53,000 in the UK, costs $262,000 in Havana.

It will be up to the Cuban government to reduce the prices because it has a monopoly on sales and decides the market value of vehicles.

Guillermo Flores, a 27-year-old computer engineer told AP: "Let's see if a revolutionary worker who lives honourably on his salary can come and buy a car at these prices. This is a joke on the people."