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Havana / DPA
The brand-new red cars are immediately conspicuous in Havana’s run-down streets. For decades, outsized 1950s-built US sedans have been among the dominant cars in Cuba and tourists love them. But at the sight of the sleek new Audis, many Cubans stop and wave to the German drivers in their half dozen vehicles.
Audi’s new SUV, the Q2, was the first of its products to be presented in the communist island state. It was shown even before the official launch in Zurich, Switzerland. Cuba is a popular backdrop for photos these days.
Tourists, celebrities, and corporations from around the world have been paying increasing attention to the Caribbean island – especially since the United States signaled a thaw in its relations with Cuba at the end of 2014.
After the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the Caribbean state became isolated during the Cold War. Now, many appear eager to be involved, as the country slowly opens up. French fashion house Chanel recently held a catwalk show in Havana for the first time in its history.
Stefan Knirsch, Audi’s chief technology officer, said in Havana that Cuba is a country in which “probably nobody even imagined a new car, certainly not in the last 50 years.”
But the car market is also a good example of how slow the pace of change is in Cuba. The government of Raúl Castro, Cuba’s 84-year-old head of state, has been steering a cautious tilt towards more market-economy policies. Around 500,000 of the 11 million Cubans now work in the growing private sector.
At the beginning of 2014, the government officially opened the market to new cars – every Cuban, it was said at the time, could now buy a new car. The announcement was akin to a revolution, coming two years after the free trade in used cars had been authorized.
The car trade was largely banned in Cuba after 1959. In the following decades, only the state imported cars, usually old Soviet models like Lada, and then later mostly Chinese makes. Until 2014, new cars were only awarded to government officials or doctors.
Although there are now ever more modern cars in Havana, the average citizen would struggle to afford a new one. Cars often cost many times what one would pay at a dealership in Europe. And this in a country where the average monthly salary in the state sector is equivalent to around 25 euros.
The reality is that control of the car market remains in the hands of the state – the government imports a few cars and then sets unaffordable prices. Private car dealerships are still not allowed.
“The current situation is that we can only provide cars if a political request has been made,” explains Ulrich Widmann, head of project management at Audi. This means that the Cuban market is actually hardly of interest, he says.
Critics suspect that the Cuban government wants to use the restrictions to conceal growing inequality during this time of economic liberalization. The government itself says that the country’s run-down infrastructure has to be developed before large numbers of new vehicles are introduced.
In any case, buying a new car remains an unattainable dream for the ordinary Cuban. “I’d like an Audi, but it would be too expensive for me,” says Yorniel Pineda, gazing at the new Q2. The taxi driver drives foreign tourists through Havana in his Chevrolet Bel Air, built in 1957. “To buy myself a car like that, I’d have to sell mine 9 times over.”
