OREANDA-NEWS. According to the analytical agency "AUTOSTAT", the capacity of the market of new cars in the first quarter of 2015 was 427 billion Rubles. It is less by 23% than the same period of the last year (553 billion Rubles). At the same time, sales of new cars fell by 36% to 367,000 units, while the average price rose by 21% to 1.17 million Rubles.

Leader in terms of revenue from sales of new passenger cars was the German premium brand Mercedes-Benz (47,8 billion Rubles), Japanese Toyota dropped to the second place (46,5 Bln Rub), and the third place went to Korean Hyundai (33, 9 billion rubles). The top-10 of automotive brands in terms of revenue also includes Kia (31,8 billion rubles), LADA (30,8 billion rubles), Nissan (29,8 billion rubles), BMW (25,8 billion rubles) Volkswagen (21,4 billion rubles), Renault (17,1 billion rubles) and Skoda (16 billion rubles).

According to the director of the agency "AUTOSTAT", Sergey Tselikov, the reduction of the capacity of the automotive market was quite expected. Real incomes of Russians are falling, prices for food and consumer goods are rising and banks credit significantly less the automobile market. "In the second half of the year, we expect the further reduce of the financial capacity of the Russian car market. Sales will be less by 40-50% than the last year, and a decrease in monetary terms will be about 25-30%. The weighted average price of a new car will continue to increase, but the pace of its growth will be slowed significantly”, - says Mr. Tselikov.