In terms of brand-by-brand sales, Russian market leader AvtoVAZ managed to comfortably outperform the market, partially helped by the launch of its brand new Vesta range-topping flagship during the month. However, this was not a particularly robust performance given that the Vesta added 1,748 units of sales to Lada's outright tally for November from a standing start. The brand posted a 29 percent y/y decline in November to 21,580 units, which almost exactly matched the company's sales trend in the previous 10 months of the year, with sales falling 30 percent to 245,634 units during that time, keeping it marginally above the overall market trend. As usual, the Hyundai and Kia brands occupied the second and third places in the market. Hyundai had the second-highest sales tally during the month and outperformed the market to a high degree, recording just a 7 percent fall in sales during November to 15,101 units. This was buoyed by the very strong performance of the Hyundai Solaris, which was once more Russia's best-selling car in November and which rose by over 1,000 units to 11,462 units as it continued to benefit from the various Russian government incentive packages like scrappage and subsidised car loans. This brought Hyundai's YTD sales down 10% y/y to 148,631 units. Kia was third in the brand sales stakes overall during November, although its performance was nowhere as strong as its stablemate Hyundai, with sales falling by 32 percent y/y during the month to 14,125 units. This was largely precipitated by an accelerated decline in the sales of the brand's best-selling Rio, which was down by 31.2 percent to 8,253 units. For the YTD Kia sales fell by 16 percent y/y to 175,491 units. Renault and Toyota in fourth and fifth spots respectively posted highly accelerated declines during the month, with sales falling 46 percent and 53 percent, respectively.

For the full year, IHS Automotive forecasts a 34.8 percent year-over-year (y/y) fall in sales to 1.63 million units, with sales down again in 2016 to 1.60 million units.

Source: IHS Automotive