2023-06-01 16:05:46
ShareOn the eve of the market launch of the updated Lada Vesta, which should be the crowning achievement on the path of import substitution, Fontanka remembered how a year ago AvtoVAZ released a “simplified” model without a number of comfort elements, but with an anti-crisis price. As it turns out now, that project quietly wilted, in principle it is impossible to buy such a car.
After Renault, the main partner of AvtoVAZ, left the Russian Federation, the Russian auto giant lost the lion’s share of key technologies and components. However, a couple of months after the nationalization of the plant, he announced the launch of the most affordable new car on the Russian market – LADA Granta Classic’22, which he recommended selling at a price of 658 thousand rubles.
To get a simplified version of the Togliatti car industry at this price, you had to trade-in your old car or take out a purchase on credit, but even so, the new Granta still looked cheaper than the previous year’s models. The joy of the buyers was poisoned by only two points: the low cost of the car was given to the concern by “simplifying” several important options; besides, it was simply impossible to find a car at least approximately at such a price in the salons of St. Petersburg.
The concern came to the idea of simplifying LADA Granta through pain and hardship. After Renault broke off relations with AvtoVAZ last spring, the plant was left without imported components. The situation was so dramatic that the production of all cars had to be stopped, and the workers sent to idle.
They decided to release the budget LADA Granta in order to produce at least something, – the employees of the concern explained to Fontanka their decision at that time, which, in fact, was anti-crisis.
LADA Granta Classic’22 was released in June last year in the minimum configuration. Of the usual equipment, there was an electric power steering, power windows for the front doors, heating and power mirrors, ISOFIX child seat mounts, daytime running lights, an on-board computer, central locking, four-speaker audio preparation, steel 14-inch wheel rims with decorative caps.
What could be replaced with imports was replaced: the German Bosch generator was replaced by a Chinese one, and a choke was also found in China. Instead of German pistons, Russian ones were put in the engine.
It was not possible to promptly solve the problem with airbags and air conditioning, so the cars that rolled off the assembly line in June decided to do without them. There was nothing to plug the cavity for the pillow in the steering wheel, so the old VAZ steering wheel was installed. An adequate replacement for the ABS system was also not quickly found, so we decided: let it be sold that way for now.
The recommended price for the basic equipment started at 658 thousand rubles, with the program of preferential car loans, the state subsidized a 20% discount, allowing you to buy Granta at a very puppet price – 543 thousand rubles.
The auto giant took the bar seriously – the total daily assembly program swung at 645 pieces. In principle, the height looked achievable – on July 14, 395 such vehicles. And if we assume that since the 15th the conveyor has reached the full capacity of the daily program, for the remaining 16 days of July the concern could have assembled 10,320 units of LADA Granta Classic’22.
Despite the modesty of the configuration, the budget price madly attracted buyers – in July 2022, 4,270 of these cars were sold, that is on average, dealers sold 138 cars daily.
At the end of 2022, the market share of LADA Granta almost doubled, the car sold 87,982 copies and took a leading position in terms of sales relative to all other brands sold in Russia, only 22% behind previous year.
However, trading so much below the overheated market at that time, when car prices jumped twice or more, and foreign cars went for any price in any configuration, seemed to be commercially incomprehensible.
Already on July 26, an air conditioner was found for Grants – from the South Korean company Erae Automotive. The unit increased the recommended retail price of the car to 745.9 thousand rubles, although the price fell to 597.2 thousand. Then they began to slowly add other missing components, and now the full ban on the production in Russia of cars without ABS.
Looking for a completely empty Granta Classic’22 at the dealership last year was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Sellers hung the car with additional equipment in the form of an alarm, tinting, music, additional anticorrosive and rugs, which already at the start of sales adds about 60 thousand on top. Yes, and in this form, the “simplified” “Grant” was not to be found – you had to agree to air conditioning and other benefits of civilization, but already 100 thousand more expensive.
However, low-end cars really left the assembly line, and they really were bought at a record low price. Despite the shortage, LADA Granta Classic’22 became mega popular with corporate clients and government customers.
In July, immediately 400 “Grant” without ABS appeared in the service of ordering a taxi “Maxim”, Taxi park “YaMoskva” received 300 “lite” sedans in December.
In August 2022, 30 LADA GRANTA Classic’ 22 cars were purchased for medical institutions of the Samara regionThe regional government said that by the end of the year, another 141 such vehicles would be handed over to doctors, and in April 2023 they received another 80 keys from “Grants”. In the same month, Udmurtia completely covered the need for ambulance transport – 62 cars went to 21 rural hospitals.
Organizations got LADA GRANTA at a record low price. Among the lucky ones is the Medical Unit No. 94 of the Moscow Region, which in August last year, under a contract with Armada LLC, purchased a car for a record 648 thousand rubles. ARMADA sold 15 GRANTAs to the Department of Health of the Yaroslavl Region at 656,000 a piece. They also delivered 5 cars for 685 thousand rubles to the State Veterinary Inspectorate of the Perm Territory, another 47 cars at the same price were purchased from the Armada by the Ministry of Health of the Vladimir Region.
The better the situation with import substitution of components at AvtoVAZ became, the higher the prices crept. In December, 59 cars cost the Nizhny Novgorod Territorial Center for Disaster Medicine 736 thousand rubles per unit, another 9 cars of the same modification, but already in April 2023, the Center bought 766 thousand rubles per unit.
Happy time is over. Now AvtoVAZ recommends selling the most budgetary version of the LADA GRANTA in the basic configuration from 692 thousand rubles. The front airbags were returned to him, equipped with rear parking sensors and an ABS braking system, power windows for the front doors, a hill-start assist system, central locking and electric mirrors. And you can’t refuse them.
– It is physically impossible to order a car less than this basis. Are you sure you want to give up the air conditioner? I’ve been selling cars for two decades – less than 1% of people buy minimum wage. Such a car will lose in comparison with the one that has such options, – said the manager of the official LADA dealer in St. Petersburg “Lada-Center”.
And he added that “May was cool – they haven’t sold like that for a long time.”
The budget version disappeared because the concern decided to gradually and smoothly return to pre-crisis versions and supply the market with cars that it offered to customers before the SVO, AvtoVAZ told Fontanka.
– We have left one of these configurations, which allows people to buy a car for quite a bit of money, and in all the rest we will further develop the equipment. Now the budget LADA Granta is not produced so much. April was a record for us – we sold about 20 thousand cars of the Granta model of various configurations, – Oleg Grunenkov, director for products and programs at AvtoVAZ, told Fontanka.
As a rule, dealers themselves order those configurations that are most profitable for sales, and focus on more common versions. It is useless to look for versions with a minimum configuration in St. Petersburg or Moscow.
— It is a matter of understanding the market situation: in a big city, the demand for under-equipped cars is low. Why would they need to bring cars that will gather dust in a warehouse, they also have plans [по продажам]. In St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan and Rostov, LADA Largus goes well, I don’t know how they love them, and from a business point of view, taxis are roomy, compact. Vesta will also be taken. And Granta is more modest, it goes worse here,” Grunenkov explained.
Budget versions mainly go to regions where the income of the population is much lower, and buyers simply will not pull super-equipped cars. In St. Petersburg, there are simply no minimum “simplified” configurations.
Natalia Vyazovkina, Fontanka.ru
1685654839
#buy #simplified #Lada #June