There was a time not long ago when having a domestic car industry was a badge of honor for any country and a gauge of its industrial development. Today, however, it’s no longer such a big deal. Of course, creating a Porsche or a Ferrari is still a tall order, but “generic” motor vehicles are being built in many parts of the world. Manufacturing facilities and assembly lines have proliferated in places that are neither particularly advanced nor rich, such as Thailand and Mexico.

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In China in the late 1990s, Communist Party bosses in the backward Wuhu province set up Chery Automobile, now one of the world’s fastest-growing automakers. It produces more than a dozen models and plans to export them all over the world. In India, Tata Motors launched its first passenger car around the same time. Not only does it now own the prestigious Jaguar and Land Rover brands, but it is poised to sell its $2,500 Nano in developed markets.

Technology has become transferable, competent managers can be easily hired and the work force can learn required skills. Leading global automakers are on the lookout for partners who can help them gain access to the local market. Today, cars sold anywhere in the world offer modern styling, plentiful high-tech gismos and standard quality and reliability.

This is why Russia’s failure to build a quality car is so astounding. Over the past decade, AvtoVAZ and GAZ, its two top automakers, had the domestic market very much to themselves, given the difficulty of doing business in the vast country. Even now, Ladas make up some 30 percent of the passenger car market. Yet, AvtoVAZ still makes a handful of tired-looking models. Its production technology is obsolete, its customer service doesn’t exist and its quality remains a bad joke among the country’s motorists.

GAZ had plans to produce a version of the Chrysler Sebring, but they came to nothing. In the first half of the year, it made fewer than 5,000 passenger cars.

Only recently did AvtoVAZ finally nab a Western partner — Renault. GAZ, meanwhile, hopes to make Opels on its production lines. But now it is too late. The Russian car market will shrink by roughly 50 percent this year, and it may not recover until next decade. By then, the world’s largest carmakers who have set up assembly and manufacturing plants in Russia will surely push domestic producers to the sidelines. In the first half of the year, locally produced foreign brands increased their market share to 25 percent from 18 percent, even in a shrinking market.

If having a domestic car industry no longer signifies wealth or status, inability to build even a mediocre car speaks volumes about Russia’s managerial incompetence. The economic crisis has revealed that the country’s corrupt and self-serving managerial class in government, state-owned conglomerates and, increasingly, the private sector has lost its ability to manage and achieve goals. It compares unfavorably even to the Soviet bureaucracy — a tall order indeed.

Vladislav Inozemtsev, director of the Center of Postindustrial Studies, recently wrote in Vedomosti about Russia’s failure to build highways during the oil boom decade and the staggering cost of the few roads that were built. The article got a huge response from readers, but the scary thing is that a similar expose can be written about almost every topic, from the health care industry to the armed forces and from the automotive industry to the priority construction projects for the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.