Russian Car Sales Slip 5% Year-on-Year in January
Executive Summary
“After a very slow first two weeks, customer activity has been picking up visibly and consistently across the industry starting from the middle of the month,” says Joerg Schreiber, chairman of the Association of European Businesses Automobile Manufacturers Committee.
Russia’s new-vehicle sales begin 2017 in the same slow lane they spent most of last year.
The Association of European Businesses Automobile Manufacturers Committee says January sales fell 5% compared with a year earlier to 77,916 units.
Committee Chairman Joerg Schreiber says if the market is going to grow this year, it showed no hurry to do so in January. But he sees reason to be optimistic.
“After a very slow first two weeks, customer activity has been picking up visibly and consistently across the industry, starting from the middle of the month,” he says in a statement.
This stirring of activity, Schreiber suggests, indicates consumers are coming to terms with the market’s 2017 prices and product offerings.
“This is a solid basis to start from into the beginning spring season, and with the recent trend continuing it should be only a matter of time until we see sales growing year-on-year,” he says.
Lada was the brand leader in January with sales up 5% at 16,334 units, well ahead of Kia, up 14% at 10,306, and Hyundai, which dived 16% to 6,694.
Toyota fared poorly, dropping to seventh place with sales off 37% at 3,831 units.
Ford edged up 11 units to 2,253 for 11th on the sales chart, ahead of 14th-place Chevrolet, up 44% at 1,734.
Among individual models Kia’s Rio led the field, jumping 16.0% to 5,693 units, ahead of Lada’s Granta – last year’s top seller – which slid 37.3% to 4,624. Lada’s Vesta was third, spiking 148.8% to 4,088.
Hyundai’s Solaris, second in sales last year, fell to fourth in the opening month, dropping 48.7% to 2,886 units.
