Vehicle sales in Russia were down almost 50% last year to 1.5 million according to JATO Dynamics.
A market that was set to overtake Germany as Europe’s largest less than two years ago saw every new car segment shrink during 2009 with the top five brands – Lada, Chevrolet, Ford, Hyundai and Renault – all losing ground vs their 2008 sales.
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Kia was the only high volume brand to show any improvement, increasing sales in most car segments with its Rio, Sportage, Cerato, Carens, Picanto, Magentis and new Soul models and posting a small second half sales gain in 2009.
Evangelos Hadjistavrou, regional general manager for JATO, said: “The situation in Russia is very serious, perhaps the worst in any major market. The market dropped by over 1.3m vehicles last year, in contrast to the growth of recent times. The most interesting part is these losses could have been even greater, but for action by the Russian government.”
Over the year, Russian authorities increased support loans to customers of any new Russian-built cars costing less than RUB600,000 (US$18,500). A further scrappage incentive has been announced for 2010, of RUB50,000 ($1,500), in an attempt to arrest the decline.
Lada remained the strongest brand in sales volumes, taking 26% total market share with sales of 354,306 vs 640,194 a year earlier – down 44%. Chevrolet in second place dropped 55% to 104,398 vehicles and Ford, third, fell 57% to 74,317 sales.
Toyota fell the most with sales dropping 64% from 188,866 in 2008 to 68,006 last year.
Through 2009, import brands in Russia also had to cope with an average 5% increase on customs duties, together with a 35% increase in the euro/rouble exchange rate, pushing up retail prices.
The large MPV segment suffered most, down 61.8% in the year to December 2009, mainly because no new models were launched in this segment through the year, to offset the declines of existing models.
