It seems Dacia can do no wrong. Its accountants probably agree, given two of the 10 best-selling cars in Europe in 2023 were Dacias, with nearly a quarter-million Sanderos and nearly 200,000 Dusters finding homes that year.
Those numbers suggest customers are pretty enamoured with the brand, or at least the value they’re getting, while Dacia hasn’t yet committed the cardinal sin of producing a vehicle that simply doesn’t fit its philosophy to sour its taste among its fans. Dacia has not attempted to go “premium” or “sporty,” it avoids fitting its cars with expensive and annoying tech, and its sole attempt at an electric vehicle thus far isn’t some overweight blob with too much power, but a £15K city car.
If the brand has gotten anywhere close to missing the mark, it’s that modern Dacias are now simply great value rather than actively cheap – a basic Sandero will set you back about £14,000, compared to the £6K the model entered the UK market at in 2012. But then today’s “basic” Sandero is a lot better equipped and frankly a lot nicer to drive and to live with, so it’s an acceptable compromise – and a £14K Sandero is still five or six grand less than the next cheapest supermini you can buy.
Another small misstep, based on online discourse at least, is that for the latest Duster, Dacia no longer offers a diesel engine, with LPG, mild hybrid, and full hybrid options instead. Diesel is still the go-to for a particular crowd – those who need some towing ability, for instance – and time will tell if Dacia’s fumbled the ball by not making one available.
Still, there are plenty of older Dusters out there, and it’s this car, sold in the UK from 2012 and revised in 2017, that we’re tipping as something of a future classic – if nothing else than on the basis of the immense affection existing Duster customers have for their cars, which is always a good sign for their future appeal.
Like the Sandero, the Duster emerged as a stone-cold bargain when it hit UK roads in 2012. Opt for basic Access specification, with its UN-style white paintwork and steel wheels, 1.6-litre petrol engine and front-wheel drive, and you could drive one away from the dealership for a fiver short of £9,000. You couldn’t even get a Fiesta that year for nine grand, and a Skoda Yeti, similarly chunky and appealing and down-to-earth, was more than 50 per cent extra.
Trading up to four-wheel drive lifted that to a far-from-excessive £10,995, and if you were absolutely determined to buy the most expensive car Dacia offered, the 1.5-litre diesel Duster Laureate with four-wheel drive, you’d still have five quid’s change from £15K, or the same as if you’d have bought the much smaller Fiat Panda 4×4.
The early Dusters had a sort of endearing lack of sophistication to the way they drove, leaning over in corners and feeling slightly bouncy on their raised suspension and fat tyres, and even in high-spec models your penny-pinching made itself felt in the look and feel of the cabin, but it was hard to complain about any of that. Not least because none of it was all that bad, either – it was easy to drive and felt robust both in the way it got down the road and the way it was bolted together. It had to be more than skin-deep really, since Dusters are popular, and well-used, in places such as Africa and South America, where an ability to last and to be repaired easily are valuable attributes.
The Duster wasn’t without quality issues, of course, wit some early UK cars being recalled for the worryingly early onset of rust thanks to poor paint procedures at the factory. But you’ll hear far more happy tales from owners who love their cars’ affordability, utility, and yes, even character.
It’s this that should propel the Duster into the hearts of buyers and enthusiasts well into the future. After all, there’s already a following for several rugged off-road vehicles from earlier decades, from the expected Jeep Cherokees and the Land Rover Discovery to more off-the-wall choices like the original Panda 4×4, or the Vauxhall Frontera, such as our own Paul Cowland is an advocate for.
The Duster’s future reputation will only be enhanced if its successor becomes similarly popular, giving the model a lineage that can be traced back to those simple early cars. We’re not talking Golf GTI or Porsche 911 levels of legendary appeal here, of course, but a consistent message over brands and model lines tends to foster brand loyalty and is the sort of thing that will have some buyers tracing the Duster’s roots as each new model arrives.
There’s one other factor about the Duster that should endear it to generations to come, too, and it’s the same one that made it popular when new: its price. This hobby of ours isn’t always defined by its affordability, but like the Duster’s spiritual predecessors, from Citroën Berlingos to Renault 4s, it should remain accessible to almost all enthusiasts for quite some time to come.
