The AEB figures showed that sales of new passenger cars and LCVs in Russia decreased by 41.5 % in April 2015 to 132,456 units – down 94,070 units compared to April 2014.

Joerg Schreiber, chairman of the AEB Automobile Manufacturers Committee, commented: “With 132,000 new vehicle registrations, total market sales in April mark a new low point in the AEB sales history over the past 10 years. Only in 2009 did we record a similarly weak but slightly better result for this month (136 thousand units).

“The similarity to 2009, the year of the Lehman crisis, demonstrates the severity of the present situation. The dynamics of the current crisis however are different, last not least this time the government responded much earlier with selective countermeasures meant to avoid an even deeper fall. Therefore, we do not expect YOY market performance to deteriorate much further, rather we foresee a gradual flattening of the negative trend in the coming months”.