Trans-Siberian Railway 2013: The Russian car park

The VAZ 2106 is currently the most frequent model in circulation in Russia…

* See the Top 20 most frequent models/Top 55 brands by clicking on the title! *

This is Part 20 of my Trans-Siberian Photo Report. You can see all other Parts of this long-term Report here. Now that the Mongolia part of this Photo Report is complete and before we travel to China, I thought I would quickly go back to Russia to share with you some pretty interesting stats about the current car park in that country. I found this a great way to conclude all the reports I made for this country.

The VAZ 2101 comes in at #4 with 1.034 million in circulation.

This study was originally published on Russian magazine/website Za Rulem and was kindly shared by gtemnykh on The Truth About Cars. At the end of 2012, there were 36.8 million cars in circulation in Russia, 44.7 million if we include trucks and buses. As expected, the most represented brand is VAZ (Lada) with 37% of the car park or 13.67 million vehicles. However nowadays more VAZ get scrapped than bought (a deficit of 600,000 units over the past year) and as a result VAZ share of the Russian car park is dropping quickly, it was 37.6% in 2011.

The VAZ 2105 ranks #7

In fact for the first time ever, more than half the cars in circulation in Russia today (52%) are foreign, a majority of them being RHD imports from Japan… To illustrate this, the second most represented brand in the country is Toyota with 3.13 million vehicles, followed by Nissan at 1.52 million. GAZ comes in at 1.4 million but this number can only decrease as the last GAZ Volga came out of the Nizhny Novgorod factory back in 2010. Moskvich is holding strong in 5th place with 1.27 million units, with the other brands above 1 million being Chevrolet (1.22 million), Ford (1.08) and Hyundai (1.07).

VAZ 2114 (aka Lada Samara 2) in Kazan, Tatarstan.

Model-wise, the park statistics show how much St Petersburg and Moscow are not representative of the cars in circulation in the country. The Top 9 most represented models in Russia are still VAZ and 16 of the Top 20 models are Russian. Even though its production ended in 2006, the VAZ 2106 has been the most frequent model in Russia for the last 12 years with 1.846 million units currently in circulation. It is followed by the VAZ 2107 at 1.781 million, the VAZ 2121 (aka Lada 4×4) at 1.052 million and the VAZ 2101 at 1.034 million.

The 11th gen should help the Toyota Corolla stay within the Top 10.

Further down we have the VAZ 2109 (Samara), 2110, 2105, 2114 (Samara gen 2) and 21099 (Samara sedan). The Toyota Corolla is the #1 foreign nameplate with 647,000 units currently in circulation, and it is estimated that way over 50% of these are RHD. Other foreigners in the Top 20 are the Ford Focus at #12, Renault Logan at #16 and Daewoo Nexia at #17. The Chevrolet Niva at #16 is not a real foreigner.

GAZ 3110 in Omsk, Siberia

Notice also the GAZ 3110 (last generation Volga) at #14 with 541,000 units, the UAZ 3151 (aka Patriot) at #19 with 385,000 and the GAZ 3102 (1982 Volga) at #20 with 382,000 units.

Full Top 20 most frequent models/ Top 55 brands in the Russian car park below.