A brief window for auto imports

An interesting, mostly below-the-radar note (for some reason this story had little traction in the brief window of its relevance, and I missed it entirely until now): from April 2009 to March 2010, Cubans that owned cars were allowed to import new cars from abroad as replacements. The idea was to get some of the old U.S. and Russian models from the 1960s off the road in order to cut fuel consumption and reduce pollution in Cuba, and as such, any car manufactured before 1990 was eligible for replacement. Some 60,000 pre-1960 automobiles still roll around Cuba, after all.

Makes sense. So what’s the problem? That part is not clear, exactly. In March, the Cuban government halted the import program with only a citation in the Official Gazette of “irregularities.”

One guess: wealthy Cubans would be the only individuals that could buy new cars from the government, and they were seeking to do so through unacceptable means. In fact, the few wealthy citizens in Cuba reportedly bought old cars from fellow Cubans (in order to fit the requirements of the program, i.e. already owning an old car), then sold this to the government and purchased one of the new vehicles, per the program’s arrangements.

I’ll be curious to look around Cuba for the few Mercedes-Benz and BMW models that made it in during the narrow window of opportunity.