The Russian car market is no longer only LADA. Yes, the domestic brand continues to be its leader and, most likely, will retain this title in the coming years, but since about the mid-2000s, cars of foreign brands have also become “our own” for us. The experts of the AUTOSTAT agency examined how the five bestsellers of the Russian car market have changed for the previous 20 years. The years 2001, 2011 and 2021 were taken as slices.
20 years ago the “classic” LADA family was the leader in our market, and its share was about a quarter. But front-wheel drive families LADA Samara and LADA 110 were already close to it, which accounted for 21% and 20%, respectively. Then our car market was so consolidated that almost 65% of all sales were cars of these three VAZ families. By the way, there were also passenger cars of the Gorky Automobile Plant in the market, and GAZ 3110 (Volga) was even in the 4th place, ahead of Niva (then still 4x4). Then, as the new concept of development of the Russian car industry was implemented, foreign cars began to enter our market more and more actively, which subsequently began to come to the ranks of the market leaders. For example, Hyundai Solaris was able to take the fifth place in 2011.
At the same time, the share of domestic models has become not as significant as before. Thus, the LADA Kalina family, which became the best-selling that year, did not even reach 6%. Accordingly, it was even lower in the "Priora", "Samara 2" and "Classics", which took places from second to fourth. This year, LADA cars are also the leaders - only now they are Granta and Vesta (with a share of more than 7%). And then there are Korean models: Kia Rio, Hyundai Creta and Solaris. It is interesting that Solaris and Rio even became the leaders of the Russian market at one time - in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
Thus, for the first time in history, the hegemony of LADA models was interrupted. In 2021, the TOP-5 of the Russian car market is unlikely to change, but a small intrigue remains: will Vesta overtake Granta? In 2018, this already happened, but then LADA Granta regained the title and has not given it to anyone yet.
