The article reviews the specifics of development, approval and implementation of strategic development plans in the automobile industry. The study of the strategic planning practice in the automobile industry has been based on comparison of various options of the strategical development of the automobile industry, other official documents that determine the governmental policy in this field, as well as general requirements to strategical planning documents established by the law. As the overview of the documents demonstrates, there are considerable drawbacks in the system of the strategic industrial development due to the uncertain status of industrial strategies within the decision-making system, to employment of external experts, to determination of target indices and arrangement of monitoring and control. The research results may be used by representatives of governmental authorities, business and the expert community for improvement of the strategic planning system in Russian and for development of industrial documents for strategic planning.