68,929 new passenger cars were sold in Yekaterinburg in ten months of 2011, which was 26,710 cars, or 63%, more than in ten months of 2010, Auto-Dealer Yekaterinburg reports.

7,618 passenger cars were sold in the city in October 2011, which exceeded the figures for a year earlier by 2,311 cars, or 44%. October proved the best month of the year since June, when 8.142 automobiles were sold in Yekaterinburg.

Considerably more cars are still being sold in Yekaterinburg than in Russia on average: in Russia overall, car sales increased by 43% in January-October 2011 and by only 27% in October.

Lada is still the most popular car on the Yekaterinburg market as usual. However, its sales growth rates have been going down lately: the sales rose by 18% in September but only by 15% in October. Among the top ten bestsellers in Yekaterinburg, Toyota sales are also slowing down a bit, while the ninth most popular brand Renault actually sold less in October than in the previous month. The brand went down from being the seventh best-selling car in September to the ninth bestseller in October 2011. This is actually the only instance of dropping sales among the top ten best-selling cars. The October’s best-selling list also features Chevrolet, Hyundai, Daewoo, Volkswagen, Nissan, and Ford.

‘A little decline in the Renault sales might have to do with both the shortage of automobiles at the dealerships and the fact that the customers started to notice the other on-the-budget brands with the newer (when compared with the French offers) makes,’ says Auto-Dealer Yekaterinburg’s Director-General Mikhail Chaplygin.