OREANDA-NEWS   By the end of March, sales of used passenger cars in Russia increased by six percent year-on-year and by 15.3 percent compared to February, to 475,000 units. Kommersant writes about this with reference to the data of the Autostat agency (Kommersant).

For the entire first quarter, the secondary car market increased by 4.6 percent to 1.3 million vehicles. At the same time, nine of the ten most popular brands show growth in three months and separately in March — sales of foreign cars are growing, while Russian Lada's are sagging.

Nevertheless, AvtoVAZ's products remain the market leader with 111.9 thousand vehicles in March and 313.7 thousand in the first quarter (minus 7.8 and 7.3 percent, respectively).

Sergey Udalov, Executive Director of Autostat, explained this trend by a combination of factors. Firstly, the high base of last year and the decline in sales of the brand's cars in the new car segment have their impact, and secondly, Lada has a fairly old fleet of used cars, and some of them are simply being completely eliminated.

Toyota shows the best result among foreign cars — plus 15.4 and plus 7.5 percent in March and the first quarter (50.3 thousand and 134.5 thousand), followed by Kia — plus 6.4 and plus 11.3 percent (25.3 thousand and 75.2 thousand). Hyundai and Volkswagen are also among the top five.

Yuri Chistov, CEO of the Fresh automotive marketplace, believes that the April result will be at the March level, because so far sales are proceeding at a comparable pace.

Earlier it was reported that in March, sales of new passenger cars in Russia increased by 30.6 percent year-on-year and by 30.3 percent compared to February, to 104.3 thousand units.