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A white Porsche Panamera was captured on video driving without a license plate through the streets of Cuba, in a new sighting that stands in stark contrast to the crisis the island is facing.
The Instagram account "Private Cars in Cuba" posted the clip this Wednesday, showcasing the luxurious sedan from behind, with tropical palm trees in the background, on an avenue in Havana.
The sighting occurs just five days after another Porsche Panamera, this one in black, was photographed driving along Vía Blanca and Diez de Octubre in Havana.
That image, posted in the Facebook group "Diplomatic Cars in Cuba," received over 600 reactions.
The absence of license plates has a bureaucratic explanation: the imported vehicles leave the port of Regla without registration because the official registration process takes place after their arrival.
In March, modern cars without license plates were leaving the port of Regla in Havana, documenting this common practice in the recent importation of vehicles.
The Porsche Panamera has a starting price of approximately 92,000 dollars in the United States and can exceed 226,500 dollars in its Turbo S E-Hybrid variant. The model was chosen Best Luxury and Performance Car 2025 by the World Car of the Year.
This contrast is particularly striking in a country where the average salary does not reach 20 dollars per month, power outages can last up to 20 hours a day, and fuel shortages are chronic.
The phenomenon is not new. In November 2025, Cubans reacted with outrage upon seeing a BMW M5 2026 —valued at over 120,000 dollars— driving through the streets of the island.
"That's a crime," users wrote on social media. Another comment summarized the paradox: "That car in Cuba is insane, and I don't mean that in a bad way, but because of the gas situation in Cuba."
The flow of high-end cars has intensified since 2023, when the U.S. Department of the Treasury granted licenses to entrepreneurs in Miami to send vehicles to self-employed workers in Cuba.
The value of those imports reached nearly 10 million dollars that year. Since then, luxury cars like Mercedes-Benz have become fashionable in Cuba, with small and medium-sized enterprises as the main channel for imports.
The legal framework was expanded with Decree 119/24, which will be in effect from January 1, 2025, and relaxed the sale of cars in dollars to individuals. Since September 2024, the Cuban government has authorized the buying and selling of vehicles at dealerships such as IMPEXPORT and CIMEX S.A., with a Special Tax by Range of 35% for high-end cars.
Each new sighting polarizes Cuban society between astonishment and outrage, transforming these vehicles into a symbol of an inequality that the regime cannot — nor wants to — explain.
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