7:55 am, July 23, 2023
Dacia is 10 years old.
That’s what the press release from Dacia said, and I had to read it twice to believe it because it feels like the Renault-owned Romanian brand has been here forever.
Using that very imprecise metric which is how many cars do you see on the roads – for Dacia, the answer is chuffing loads – it would seem as though we Brits have taken the carmaker to our hearts.
Indeed, Dacia has put a figure on it – the 250,000th Dacia (of the current iteration) was sold by dealer Richard Sanders in Northampton only last month.
I say ‘current iteration’ because Dacia was in the UK in the 1980s but no-one really remembers and the Dacia of today probably doesn’t want you to remember, either.
The Duster of ‘Dacia 1.0’ imported here in 1985 was (consults the internet) a rebadged car of similar Romanian ancestry, originally called the ARO 10.
It was designed for farmers and priced at £6,000, which made it some four grand cheaper than the most basic Land Rover 90 of the time.
Sounds like the current car in terms of being cheap, but while you’ll find motoring journos like me raving about the Duster of the 21st century, Autocar described the shabby offering of the 1980s as ‘an automotive excrescence so terrible it makes a bus pass look attractive’.
And you thought Clarkson was harsh about the Vauxhall Vectra a decade later…
Now that I think of it, I do remember Dacia arriving in the UK a decade ago.
The company sent down a Sandero and Duster to our offices, both in entry-level, bargain basement, proper poverty-spec ‘Access’ trim.
White was the only colour if you’ll remember, the bumpers were unpainted, they had steel wheels, manual windows and a radio was optional.
We devoted a large slice of the magazine to the launch (relaunch?) of Dacia, and even took the Sandero on a UK-wide road trip to try to visit as many dealerships from our Hampshire south coast base as we could in 24 hours.
I think we gave up by the time we got to Northampton; the backache from the flimsy seat together with the coarse engine noise was just unbearable.
But there was, and I use this word cautiously, character.
Even then, 10 years ago, many cars were starting to feel just a little too similar, and by that I mean depressingly excellent at everything.
The new Dacias were clearly built to a price, but there was some no-frills charm about them.
With some clever advertising and no-haggle prices, it was no wonder the cars appealed to so many – some people, let’s face it, just want something that’ll keep them dry when they’re going to the shops.
While Dacia has gone just a little upmarket these days – you can’t get those poverty specials any more and Sandero prices start at a frankly scandalous £13,795 (I’m joking, by the way) – it’s still a very rational car brand and still peddles an excellent line in respectable, commonsense cars.
But what does the future hold?
Dacia will of course go down the electric route – it has to, after all – but as we all know, electric often adds a level of complexity that basic cars such as Dacias aren’t used to, and more importantly, electric can add cost.
This month, the firm said it will bring Europe’s cheapest electric car, the Spring, to the UK, but I’m wondering what Dacia does next.
It has already shown off its Manifesto concept – pictured at top – which, if Dacia can put something vaguely similar into production, will be able to continue this strangely romantic view we Brits have of simple, no-nonsense transport.
Citroen has also shown its hand recently with its Oli concept car that does much the same thing as the Dacia Manifesto, but we’ve yet to see a really ingenious and, importantly, cheap electric car that’s a proper car for the next few decades.
The jury’s out on who will get there first but my money’s on Dacia.
This column appears in the current edition of Car Dealer – issue 185 – along with news, reviews, interviews, features and much more! Read and download it for FREE here!
