October 3, 2014. Sverdlovsk Region is Russia’s fifth largest market for SUVs based on the sales in the eight months of 2014. Still, these figures are 1.5% down on last year (sales declined from 18,700 to 18,400 units), Avtostat Analytical Agency reports.

According to Avtostat, the top ten local markets (296,700 units) made up over a half of SUV market in Russia in the eight months of 2014 (nearly 556,000 vehicles were sold in the country all in all). The SUV segment dropped by 5.9% in January-August 2014 compared with January-August 2013, yet on the whole, this figure is higher than the sector’s average (-12%). The share of SUVs was 37.4% on the Russian new passenger vehicles market in the eight months of the year.

‘As for the local peculiarities of Russian SUV markets, just like a year earlier, more than 10,000 vehicles were sold in 13 federal constituencies. Only in four out of the country’s top thirty local markets the SUV sales were actually better than a year earlier: Samara Region (+1.8%), Volgograd Region (+1.1%), Saint Petersburg (+0.1%), and Voronezh Region (+0.1%). Sales dropped on the rest of the markets, with the greatest downfalls observed in Leningrad Region (-27%), Kemerov Region (-18%), and Stavropol Region (-13%),’ the agency says.

As for the top ten cities in January-August 2014, sales dropped by 2.8% in Bashkortostan, by 5.8% in Khanty-Mansiysky Autonomous Region, by 7.5% in Krasnodar Territory, by 3.3% in Moscow, by 12.1% in Moscow Region, by 4% in Nizhniy Novgorod Region, and by 1.5% in Tatarstan and Sverdlovsk Region.