In the streets of Damascus, it is not rare to come across a Chevrolet or Buick from the 1950s, complete with chrome and gleaming tail fins - and it's not because the country is full of vintage car buffs.
With car import taxes reaching 500 percent, most Syrians cannot afford to buy a new, or even more recent second-hand car.
A used 2000 Mercedes E320, worth 50,000 dollars on the German market, will cost a Syrian at least 253,000 dollars, says Abu Mohammed, a second-hand car dealer in Damascus.
The government imposes taxes of up to five times the price of the vehicle, making Syria one of the most expensive places in the world to buy a car. And with average salaries of 150 dollars a month, few can afford such a luxury.
Up until 2000, car imports to Syria had been monopolised by the government for over four decades, ostensibly in order to protect the national automobile industry and control foreign currency spending. The problem was, Syria did not produce any of its own cars.
But though the government has ended its monopoly on car imports, prices have remained well beyond the means of most Syrians.
"'Prices are falling': that rumour has been going around since car imports were allowed by the private sector four years ago. But every time, we put off buying a car while we wait for the dream to come true," a Syrian journalist wrote recently.
"But the prices continue to climb. The measures taken to lower them always result in the opposite happening."
In just the past three months, car prices went up by 20 to 25 percent after the government decided to price them in euro equivalents, according to Mohammad Nabil Jerudi, a car salesman.
A low-end Peugeot 607, currently costs 113,000 dollars in Syria, compared to the 33,000 dollars it would cost without the taxes. The same model cost 100,000 dollars at the beginning of the year, a representative from the French make in Damascus said.
Abu Mohammed said car dealers were demanding a lowering of customs duties and an end to dozens of other supplementary taxes, like 'luxury tax', which individual car buyers are still subject to.
In December 2003, Syrians were let down once again when their government asked in negotiations for a new trade association with the European Union to maintain its high import taxes on vehicles.
But despite the prohibitive prices, BMWs, Audis and Mercedes are more and more prevalent, a sign that there is a new middle class emerging - one that has been pampered by the government.
The rest of Syria will have to make due with browsing through car shows, the first of which was organised in April 2001 in Damascus.
Two years later, there were still just 900,000 cars in Syria for a population of 17 million, according to a ministry of transport official.
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