When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, the automotive industry in the region changed almost overnight. BMW was one of the many brands that ended production and sales there. That left the workers at the Avtotor Kaliningrad facility, where BMWs were made, with a bunch of parts and not much to do with them. It turns out, some of them decided to build cars with those leftover parts anyway. Last year, they sold 145 of them, and that’s not even the weirdest part of this “bootleg BMW” situation.
Those sales figures come from data dug up by the Russian newspaper Kommersant, which reports that BMW sales in Russia nearly tripled year-on-year in 2025. In other words, demand and sales are growing despite no new parts on the way. The cars rolling off of the line are a true hodgepodge.
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