Lada Temporarily Loses Top Sales Spot in Russia

9 years, 9 months ago - 8 January 2015, Autoblog

As we explained just a few weeks back, Russia's best-known automaker, Lada, is having issues. How big are its troubles, you ask? Well, for the first time in about 40 years, the country's best selling car does not feature the company's iconic longship on its nose.

The Granta, a subcompact built by Lada and its partial owner, Renault, was surpassed by the Kia Rio in November sales, falling just 314 units short thanks to what the Russian company called supplier problems.

"In November we had some problems with several suppliers. We had to stop the production on the Granta/Kalina line for a couple of days. Less production means fewer sales, logically," a spokesman for AvtoVAZ, Lada's parent company, told Automotive News Europe.

Despite losing its crown for the first time Leonid Brezhnev ran the Soviet Union, Lada should easily retain the yearly sales crown, with the Granta racking up over 139,000 sales in the first 11 months of 2014. Its nearest rival, the Hyundai Solaris (known in the US as the Accent) has only sold about 105,000 units over the same period, ANE reports.