Azerbaijan 2012: Kia Sportage and Toyota Prado fight it out

Kia Sportage

* See the estimated Top 20 best-selling models and 4 street videos by clicking on the title! *

Thanks to my dear friend Vanessa’s dad, Laszlo Liszkai, I can now share with you some street pictures of Azerbaijan, and this prompted me to dust off a country I had not explored in 2 years. A lot has happened since and with the help of over 2 hours of 2013 YouTube videos of the streets of capital city Baku I think I can give you a pretty accurate idea of what the most popular cars in the country currently are. And I’ve got one word for you: SUV! Lots and lots of them in the streets. The title of best-selling car in Azerbaijan should go to one of these 4 models: Kia Sportage, Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, Hyundai Santa Fe and Hyundai ix35. My bet is on the Kia Sportage, which can literally be seen at every street corner in Baku.

Toyota Prado

There seems to be a long history of small Korean SUV sales in Azerbaijan and the Santa Fe has also enjoyed long-term success in teh country, with the all-new generation already visible in the streets of Baku. Below these 4 SUVs, the Hyundai Accent and Lada Priora could top the ‘sedan’ category.The Lada Priora could rank higher as it may be more successful in other parts of the country than the capital.

Baku street scenes

The Hyundai Sonata, Toyota Land Cruiser/Lexus LX, Nissan Sunny and Mitsubishi Pajero also have a good chance at featuring in the Azerbaijani Top 10 in 2012, with the Kia Cerato and Hyundai Elantra also very successful. Notice also the new Kia Rio very popular with taxi fleets, the Toyota Camry relatively common, Daewoo Nexia doing well and Toyota Corolla not to be forgotten.

Baku street scenes

The Azerbaijani car landscape has other particularities: there are a lot of Mercedes 200/300, C-Class and E-Class on the streets but most of them seem to be second-hand models that should therefore not have an impact on the new models ranking I suggest below the jump…

Baki Taxi. Picture by Laszlo Liszkai

MG3

…London taxis are everywhere, branded ‘Baki taxi’ and the Chinese are here, mainly under the form of taxis like the Lifan Solano and Geely MK, and I spotted a couple of MG3 on Baku streets as well…

Previous post: Azerbaijan 2010: Lada, Toyota Camry and Hyundai Sonata dominate

Full Year 2012 estimated Top 20 models Ranking Table and 4 street videos below.