Cheap, cheerful and going great guns, the Dacia brand has been growing steadily since it was launched in the UK five years ago, with the Logan hatchback.
And with value for money being more and more of a focus for car buyers, the Romanian budget brand’s success shows no signs of abating. Yet the brand is no recent upstart – it has a long and prolific history, with Renault a permanent fixture.
Here are five things you may not have known about Dacia Cars.
Dacia is over 50 years old
It’s a relative newcomer to the UK, having been introduced here by parent brand Renault in 2013. But Dacia is actually more than 50 years old – it was established in 1966 in Romania and is called after the Roman name for its home country. The historic region of ‘Dacia’ covered most of the current Romanian land mass.
Its first factory was constructed in 1968 and the company’s first car, the 1300 saloon, rolled off the production line in August 1969. The car was largely based on the Renault 12, which was the French company’s best-seller in its home market.
This isn’t the first time Dacia has been sold in the UK
The Dacia brand was briefly sold in the UK between 1983 and 1985, with three vehicles on offer. The original Duster, based on a Romanian ‘ARO’ 4x4 with Renault running gear, the 1310 pick-up, which was derived from the Renault 12, and the Denem. The latter was a complete facsimile of the 1310 saloon, itself a rudimentary facelift of the long-defunct Renault 12, and was the UK’s cheapest car for a short while.
It’s the fifth largest car producer in Europe
While the Dacia brand remains a relatively small brand in the UK, with a market share of around two per cent, it is actually one of Europe’s biggest car producers. Its factory in Mioveni, about 80 miles west of Bucharest, produces over 350,000 cars a year – the fifth biggest car factory in Europe in terms of volume.
Its best-selling model remained in production for 35 years
The Dacia 1300 was introduced during the Cold War and for many years was Romania’s only real choice in the car market. As a result, over two million were produced in an incredible production run of 35 years, including van, pick-up and camper van variants that were never produced by Renault.
It was also known as the 1310 and 1410 later in its life, while the very last models had the front headlights from a Nissan Primera to try and give the car a more modern appearance. The last 1410 saloon was produced in 2004, but the pick-up lasted a further two years and was finally withdrawn in 2006, 27 years after the Renault 12 on which it was based.
There are over 100,000 Dacias on the road in the UK
As of the end of 2017, there were 110,032 Dacias on the UK’s roads, compared to just 13 (presumably old Dusters, Denems and private imports) before 2013. That makes the Romanian brand one of the fastest growing ever in the UK, and that growth continues apace…
