The beginning of this year was the worst for the Russian car market in the last 20 years, said Dmitry Kostromin, the sales and marketing director of AvtoVAZ. “We made forecasts for how 2026 would start. Unfortunately, it started even worse than we predicted. In my opinion, this is probably the worst January-February in the last 20 years of statistics. If we slightly adjust the method of counting the market and take into account only new cars that are actually sold and registered, the market is even worse in reality,” said Kostromin at the ForAuto 2026 forum (quoted by Interfax).
The “AUTOSTAT” agency earlier reported a 28.7% year-on-year drop in registrations of Lada passenger cars in January, to 19,700 units. At the same time, the total volume of the car market in the past month was estimated at 80,600 units, which is 9.5% less compared to the same month a year earlier. The head of AvtoVAZ, Maxim Sokolov, said in mid-February that Lada sales were also weak in February. As a result, the company reduced its sales plan for the month by 15% (just over 20,000 cars). According to Kostromin, the only positive point is that manufacturers’ warehouses are not overstocked this year. At the same time, the AvtoVAZ top manager admitted that “without creative ideas, this market probably won’t recover” (The Moscow Times).
