Sales of Damas minivans have been resumed in car dealers in Russia. The price is around 11 thousand US dollars. These minivans are probably being delivered through Kazakhstan in “parallel import”. UzAuto announced that it stopped supplying cars to Russia in March last year.
In February last year, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US General Motors stopped supplying its models to Russia.
From March 2022, UzAuto Motors also stopped exporting cars to Russia. Eurasianet cited the fact that South Korea, a supplier of semiconductors and microchips to the company, joined the sanctions against Russia.
In turn, GM confirmed in response to Eurasianet’s request that the delivery of Chevrolet-branded vehicles to Russia by UzAuto will be suspended from March 9, 2022.
However, according to reports on social networks, several brands of Chevrolet models may have been delivered and sold to Russia during 2022 under “parallel import” schemes.
UzAuto Motors produces great many cars that are not being sold in Uzbekistan
According to the Statistics Agency, UzAuto Motors produced 120,631 cars in January-May 2023. Notably, 39,264 units of Cobalt, 27,961 units of Lacetti-Gentra, and 26,815 units of Damas were produced over the past 5 months. This is 78% of the total produced cars.
The sale of the most popular models such as Damas, Labo, Cobalt and Gentra was stopped at the beginning of December 2022. Almost 7 months have passed and the process has not been resumed.
UzAuto Motors continues to export cars abroad, despite the reduction in production and the limited supply of cars to the domestic market. In particular, 17,636 new Chevrolet brand cars were sold in neighboring Kazakhstan in January-May 2023.