At the beginning of 2026, a real sensation occurred in the Russian car market: the Japanese brand Mazda, thanks to the CX-5 crossover, made a sharp breakthrough and for nine weeks in a row (from the 3rd to the 11th week) confidently remained in the top 10 leading automakers, and in some weeks even rose to 6th place, reports Autostat.
The secret of success turned out to be simple – the Mazda CX-5 model fit perfectly under the new level of preferential recycling fee of up to 160 horsepower, and its price, image and consumer qualities appealed to many Russians, said the head of Avtostat, Sergei Tselikov.
However, starting from the second half of March, experts recorded a sharp cooling: Mazda sales fell, and at the end of last week, only 189 new cars of the brand were registered in Russia, which provided it with only 24th place in the sales ranking.
Among the so-called “alternative brothers” – not included in the top 3 mass Chinese brands – Mazda was behind Toyota with 548 cars sold, BMW (225 units), Audi (209 units) and Volkswagen (197 units).
Nevertheless, the overall statistics for 18 weeks of 2026 still look impressive: a total of 8,175 new Mazda cars were registered, which is the tenth result among all brands in the Russian Federation.
At the same time, the CX-5 crossover accounted for more than 90% of the brand’s sales – 7,411 units, and the share of the Mazda CX-5 model itself in the overall market of new passenger cars in Russia was almost 2%. This means that every 50th new car buyer this year chose the Mazda CX-5.
For comparison, Toyota’s similar figure for the same period is higher – 10,122 cars sold and seventh position, so the advantage of the main Japanese competitor is still preserved, however, provided that supplies stabilize and the price advantage is maintained, the Mazda CX-5 has every chance of returning to the top 10 in the second half of 2026, the specialist noted.
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