Best Selling Cars Around The Globe: Belarus Over Russian Cars Yet?

Matt Gasnier
by Matt Gasnier
best selling cars around the globe belarus over russian cars yet

Over the last few weeks, we have travelled to Germany, Czech Republic, Israel. Today we are stopping in Belarus, part of the USSR until 1990 and home to just under 10 million inhabitants.

Now if Cold War reminiscence, endless forests and Orthodoxy are not really your thing – well that’s not my business hey but I’ve got you covered: I have prepared 159 additional countries for you to visit in my blog, so don’t be shy and click away!

It took a while for Belarus to get rid of Russian influence but this year the best-selling car in the country is not Russian…

All the details after the jump…

The Belarus car market bucks all European trends this year and grows by 26 percent on 2010 to reach 16,275 registrations, that’s including Light Commercial Vehicles.

A significant event occurred in Belarus in 2011: the best-selling model in the country is not coming from Russia but from France or Romania, depending on which way you look at it: the Renault Logan (born Dacia) is up 6 spots and a massive 98 percent on 2010 to land in pole position with 630 sales and 3.9 percent market share, even though its facelift happened a few years back.

Belarus is third country in the world with Romania and Moldova where the Logan is #1 in 2011.

But the Russians are not far behind: in second position we find 2010′s best-seller, the GAZ Gazelle down a steep 62 percent to 475 units and 2.9 percent share…

…followed by the Lada Priora up 20 percent to 426 sales and 2.6 percent share.

Renault lodges another fantastic performance in 4th place: the Sandero is up 38 ranks and 405 percent year-on-year to reach 409 units sold and 2.5 percent, again very impressive given the Sandero has been around for a couple of years now.

A second Lada climbs in the Top 5: the 34 year-old 4×4 (aka Niva) with 382 sales, up 22 percent on 2010, an outstanding feat given its age.

Other great performers in the Top 10 include the VW Polo sedan landing directly at the Ford Focus up 311 percent to #9 and the Mitsubishi Outlander up 78 percent to

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  • Lorenzo Lorenzo on Feb 14, 2012

    Once again, a country where smaller fuel efficient cars are popular, and Fiat is nowhere on the list. I would expect Fiat to be pushing hard to expand in such markets. Is Sergio spending too much time with Chrysler, or was it his predecessors who failed to expand into these markets?

  • AGD AGD on Feb 15, 2012

    "A second Lada climbs in the Top 5: the 34 year-old 4×4 (aka Niva) with 382 sales, up 22 percent on 2010, an outstanding feat given its age." You should check also when Lada 2107 & Samara started being manufactured. I thought 2105/7 was discontinued several years ago.

    • Inside Looking Out Inside Looking Out on Feb 20, 2012

      2105/7 means the year when they will be discontinued :) They will keep them current another 100 years. Panther is a modern platform in comparison.

  • William I think it's important to understand the factors that made GM as big as it once was and would like to be today. Let's roll back to 1965, or even before that. GM was the biggest of the Big Three. It's main competition was Ford and Chrysler, as well as it's own 5 brands competing with themselves. The import competition was all but non existent. Volkswagen was the most popular imported cars at the time. So GM had its successful 5 brands, and very little competition compared to today's market. GM was big, huge in fact. It was diversified into many other lines of business, from trains to information data processing (EDS). Again GM was huge. But being huge didn't make it better. There are many examples of GM not building the best cars they could, it's no surprise that they were building cars to maximize their profits, not to be the best built cars on the road, the closest brand to achieve that status was Cadillac. Anyone who owned a Cadillac knew it could have been a much higher level of quality than it was. It had a higher level of engineering and design features compared to it's competition. But as my Godfather used to say "how good is good?" Being as good as your competitors, isn't being as good as you could be. So, today GM does not hold 50% of the automotive market as it once did, and because of a multitude of reasons it never will again. No matter how much it improves it's quality, market value and dealer network, based on competition alone it can't have a 50% market share again. It has only 3 of its original 5 brands, and there are too many strong competitors taking pieces of the market share. So that says it's playing in a different game, therfore there's a whole new normal to use as a baseline than before. GM has to continue downsizing to fit into today's market. It can still be big, but in a different game and scale. The new normal will never be the same scale it once was as compared to the now "worlds" automotive industry. Just like how the US railroad industry had to reinvent its self to meet the changing transportation industry, and IBM has had to reinvent its self to play in the ever changing Information Technology industry it finds it's self in. IBM was once the industry leader, now it has to scale it's self down to remain in the industry it created. GM is in the same place that the railroads, IBM and other big companies like AT&T and Standard Oil have found themselves in. It seems like being the industry leader is always followed by having to reinvent it's self to just remain viable. It's part of the business cycle. GM, it's time you accept your fate, not dead, but not huge either.
  • Tassos The Euro spec Taurus is the US spec Ford FUSION.Very few buyers care to see it here. FOrd has stopped making the Fusion long agoWake us when you have some interesting news to report.
  • Marvin Im a current owner of a 2012 Golf R 2 Door with 5 grand on the odometer . Fun car to drive ! It's my summer cruiser. 2006 GLI with 33,000 . The R can be money pit if service by the dealership. For both cars I deal with Foreign car specialist , non union shop but they know their stuff !!! From what I gather the newer R's 22,23' too many electronic controls on the screen, plus the 12 is the last of the of the trouble free ones and fun to drive no on screen electronics Maze !
  • VoGhost It's very odd to me to see so many commenters reflexively attack an American company like this. Maybe they will be able to find a job with BYD or Vinfast.
  • VoGhost I'm clearly in the minority here, but I think this is a smart move. Apple is getting very powerful, and has slowly been encroaching on the driving experience over the last decade. Companies like GM were on the verge of turning into mere hardware vendors to the Apple brand. "Is that a new car; what did you get?" "I don't remember. But it has the latest Apple OS, which is all I care about." Taking back the driving experience before it was too late might just be GM's smartest move in a while.
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