Sleek and glistening, the General Motors sedans creep off the
assembly line here. They are as new as cars can get. And so is the
assembly line, where the first test cars emerged this month.
Even as G.M. is scaling back elsewhere in Europe, the company is
ramping up production in Russia, a country that is becoming a bright
spot for G.M. and much of the rest of the automotive industry.
Trickle-down oil wealth and the spread of easily accessible
financing are lifting sales, which rose 40 percent in the first half
of this year from the period a year earlier. G.M., Ford, Volkswagen,
Nissan and Renault are all opening new plants, or intend to do so
soon.
The new G.M. assembly line in this picturesque town, an old
center of the Russian car industry on the Volga River, will produce
30,000 Aveo sedans a year. Cars coming off the assembly line end up
in a brilliantly illuminated inspection room, where every inch is
carefully examined. If all goes well, production will start in
January.
The site is one of half a dozen facilities that G.M. runs in
Russia, where the Detroit automaker intends to invest $1 billion
over the next five years. The money is a good bet today, analysts of
the Russian market say, for the same reason that politics here
recently got a jolt with street protests: the Russian middle class
is rising, and becoming a force in both commerce and public life.
"I would put Russia in the same breath as China," Timothy E. Lee,
the head of G.M.'s international division, said at a groundbreaking
ceremony last summer for a plant in St. Petersburg that will make
midprice sedans.
Russians are snatching up foreign-branded cars. The Hyundai
Solaris was the best-selling vehicle in Russia last year. Hyundai,
Nissan and Renault all did well in the first 11 months of this year,
with sales increases ranging from 11 percent to 23 percent.
Over all, Russian car sales are now approaching three million
cars annually, according to the Association of European Businesses,
a group that tracks sales here as part of its efforts to promote
trade between Russia and the European Union.
Russia is projected to surpass Germany and become the largest car
market in Europe in 2014. It is already nipping at Germany's lead.
In August, Russians bought more cars than Germans did, before sales
tapered off in the autumn.
International car companies say the best way to benefit from the
growth is through investing heavily in Russian manufacturing,
elbowing aside local brands.
The Russian automobile industry survived the financial crisis not
through subsidies, though these were handed out, but through a
willingness to embrace foreign manufacturers -- even if that hurt
homegrown brands like the Lada and the Volga, the model once made in
the plant here.
Russians have shown little nostalgia for their own cars.
"I'm glad they're gone," said Nikolai Chernyshov, a 34-year-old
lawyer, as his family spilled out of a Ford Focus at a shopping
center. He has not shed a tear, he said, for the Lada he once drove.
"No matter what effort we put into making them better, they never
got any better," he said.
The Volga, an overpowered slab of steel, was once the vehicle of
choice of K.G.B. agents. It even had an ominous nickname, the Black
Raven. But the cars often broke down, diminishing their cachet.
