Kazakhstan April 2014: UZ-Daewoo Gentra lands in 6th place

UZ-Daewoo Gentra

* See the Top 25 best-selling models by clicking on the title! Thanks Irina *

The Kazakh new car market is used to year-on-year gains a lot more aggressive than the 4% delivered in April at 13,961 registrations. Is this the end of explosive growth for this market? Too early to tell, especially given the year-to-date total is still up a brilliant 19% on 2013 at 48,833 units. The Lada Priora continues to reign supreme thanks to 1,340 sales and 9.6% share, followed like in the year-to-date ranking by the Lada Granta at 7.3% and the Hyundai Accent at 6.1%. The Kia Rio is up 119% to remain in 4th place and should soon pass the GAZ Gazelle (-12% this month) to also claim the #4 spot in 2014, and the Lada Largus breaks into the Kazakh Top 5 for the very first time thanks to sales up 227% on April 2013.

First Top 5 ranking for the Lada Largus in Kazakhstan and worldwide.

But the big event this month is the thunderous arrival of the UZ-Daewoo Gentra at a formidable 6th place with 520 sales and 3.7% share. The Uzbekistan subsidiary of General Motors had been placing the Nexia on the Kazakh podium for years up until 2013 but it only ranks #17 so far in 2014, so it seems the Gentra is destined to replace the Nexia atop the Kazakh sales charts. The UZ-Daewoo Gentra is in fact a 2007 Chevrolet Optra Advance, itself a slightly disguised 2003 Optra. As such, UZ-Daewoo can offer it for a very competitive price, so much so that the Gentra is one of the cheapest new cars on sale in neighbouring Russia: cheaper than a Citroen C1 or Kia Picanto and competing with Chinese entries FAW V5, V2 and Lifan Solano…

Previous month: Kazakhstan March 2014: Kia Rio and Nissan Qashqai in Top 5

Previous year: Kazakhstan Full Year 2013: Lada Priora tops world’s fastest growing market

Full April 2014 Top 25 models Ranking Table below.