The current state of russia’s automobile industry, even for the russians themselves, is a visible marker of the real impact of Western sanctions. The exit of the Western car assembly companies, the lack of components, the production of only budget cars without airbags are russian car owners have already faced.
But now russians will have a new choice: Iranian Saipa, its import has already been announced in russia, as TASS reports. At the same time, there are plans to start assembling them in St. Petersburg, most likely, at the same factories that previously engaged in the assembly of Nissan, Toyota and Hyundai.
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Also, behind the news about the import of Iranian passenger cars, which are indirectly related to the profile of Defense Express, there may be another process already connected with military equipment. Since russian military auto industry is extremely dependent on Western components. And the main russian manufacturers of military trucks KamAZ and Ural have also suffered a powerful sanction blow.
In particular, the Ural Automobile Plant was left without front axles, and for their own production in April last year they tried to purchase equipment. In order to understand the level of dependence, for the production of the Ural-6370 only the main nodes of the plant purchased the transmission of the German company ZF, and the front axle from the Hungarian Rába. And the Ural-6370 is not only a base for the Tornado-U armored truck, but also tractors for armored vehicles.
As plant’s spokesman states, the only independent product from foreign components is the Ural-4320. But it has the YaMZ engines and KamAZ transmission. And these two factories are also struggling with import substitution.
For example, since March 2022, KamAZ has been left without components from Daimler Truck AG. And in such a model as the KamAZ-6560, which is used as the Pantsir SAM chassis, there is also German transmission by ZF. The KamAZ engines contain a share of western components, its engine-building divisions, in particular, Tutaevsky Motor Plant actively complained about the sanctions, being left without components.
And the real condition of the russian engine industry is fully demonstrated by the disassembly of the popular YAMZ-530 series engine, which is installed to the Ural and KamAZ. It showed that the cylinder blocks are German Fritz Winter, the piston group is the US Federal Mogul, the crankshaft parts are by German Mahle, the electronics is Bosch, which was once produced in Ryazan.
That is, the problems with import substitution in russia are much deeper than front axles or transmissions. And therefore, it is entirely worth expecting that together with Iran’s civilian Saipa, KIAN will enter the russian market, which during the years of sanctions somehow established the production of copies of the Ural-375 under the name KIAN 160.
And also allegedly independently produces copies of Volvo: KIAN 500 and KIAN 700. The russia’s armed forces are most interested in all these models, since during the years of high petrodollars income, they tied their military auto industry to the Western components assembly.
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