In the first quarter of this year, GAZ reduced sales by 34.7% to 33, 383 cars. In three months, the automobile plant sold 9.3 thousand Volga cars and 24 thousand trucks and minibuses through its Russkiye Mashiny trading house (only in the latter there is an increase of 6.3%). Only, it seems, this did not excite anyone.
GAS CONTINUES … BUT DOES NOT WIN
Outwardly, it seems that nothing is happening: new cars - cars and trucks, including the Valdai series - are leaving the gates of the workshops strictly on schedule. Workers and engineers regularly receive wages, even a decrease in sales in the first quarter turned out to be planned.
“Yes, there was a decline in sales, but we predicted it at the beginning of the year, so we reduced production,” explains Viktor Maslennikov, Deputy General Director of TD Russian Machines. - But everything that was produced was sold.
Actually, on this note, the optimism of everyone with whom we had to communicate at GAZ ended up because the situation at the huge enterprise, where 58 thousand people work, is very, very difficult. Yes, the products diverge, they get paid regularly, but there haven’t been new passenger models, and there are no negotiations with potential foreign investors, although they are held regularly.
But, as it turned out, there is not only gloomy news at GAZ.
“First about the Volga,” continues Victor Maslennikov. - The promised news - GAZ 3110 7 will not be. This decision has been made definitively. At the Moscow Motor Show, we will show the next modernization of the GAZ 3110 5 / "> GAZ 31105 model. In it, a 2.4-liter Chrysler engine that meets Euro III standards will take a place under the hood, and in addition, the interior will be thoroughly updated with the help of a German company. At the same time, we are finalizing the bridge and the box - increasing reliability, reducing noise. At the same time, the car will remain in the same price niche as the current one. As soon as we cross the threshold of $ 8, 000, the Volga will stop buying, and we are still borrowing 4% We are not going to give our market share.
We connect the future of the passenger direction with a foreign partner. Who will it be is an open question. But we will not start spending money on development ourselves - it is expensive and there is no time. But where we invest and intend to do this in the future is commercial transport - our present and future. Both the city, and the village, and communal services, and the army feel the need for small trucks and minibuses, so the Gazelle family is the object of our special attention: we will improve it. Among medium-tonnage vehicles, the main player today is Valdai - it has very good prospects, at least for the next five years. Especially if a bus appears at its base.
Further, the discussion turned on a topic that was painful for GAZ - about the incessant criticism of the "gazelles" from the standpoint of security in the press.
“What year in a row have we been deliberately beaten and beaten for this!” - V. Maslennikov is getting excited. - In the spring, the Minister of Transport, speaking in today's language (I myself do not like this expression), “ran over” the “Gazelle” - demanded to remove our minibus from the market altogether. Meanwhile, it meets all the safety requirements for machines of this class. Accidents on the road became more frequent? So in the old days, the head of the car depot was taken off his head if he had launched such a car with such a driver, and now there is no control at all in most fleets. I’ll say straightforwardly: one gets the impression that someone is climbing over to free our niche in the market for minibuses of another manufacturer …
THERE IS NO PROPHET IN OUR FATHERLAND
With this anti-Gazel campaign at GAZ, periodic failures in the sale of automobile plant products are associated. Therefore, hedging and more and more actively in recent years have been working in foreign markets. We have established good relations with South Africa - Gazelle minibuses go there with a bang. In the future, the plant will ship up to 30 thousand cars there annually! The plans include supply options to Cuba, export of diesel "gazelles" to Turkey has begun. Last year, 50 thousand cars were sold abroad, and plans for this one are already 60.
Meanwhile, everyone understands: the veteran of our automobile production will not have an easy life. A powerful competitor, the auto industry of China, enters the Russian market.
“So far, the Chinese are only probing the soil, but their expansion is inevitable,” our source said. - They will certainly try to break into our niche. And what can we oppose to such an onslaught? Behind them is the purposeful state support of the export aspirations of their factories. And we have? Who is ready to protect the national automaker? The very same China, entering the WTO, demanded huge benefits for itself, and our negotiators seem to forget about it. Two years ago, they adopted the famous concept for the development of the Russian automobile industry. The only thing that is correctly reflected there is the current state of Russian car factories. What's next? We are increasingly being told about the responsibility of business to society, to the state, but no one has ever heard of the responsibility of the state to business. Here is the GAS. He creates jobs, pays a lot of money to the budget in the form of taxes, but the question of survival seems to concern only us.
