Dacia Duster: Value that's not easily dismissed 

The Duster has been a huge success for Dacia on the basis that it allowed people who previously could only afford second-hand to buy new instead

New Dacia Duster

DACIA DUSTER
Rating	★★★☆☆
Pric e	€ 23,995 - €24,507 as tested
Engine	A decent turbodiesel - frugal but has to be thrashed to  extract performance
The Spec	Amazing for the price
Verdict	It's all about the bottom line

If you’ll forgive us, this week at Examiner Motoring we’re conducting something of a time travel experiment by bringing you back 22 years to the month of July 1999 (or VII, MCMXCIX, if you’ve a Latin bent).

July that year was a busy month in the world: the Kosovo war had just ended; the Scottish Parliament was officially opened; John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard; Falun Gong was banned by the Chinese; the US celebrated its’ 233rd year of independence; Hicham El Guerrouj ran the fasted ever mile in 3.43.13; and, Brandi Chastain scored the winner for the US in the World Cup Final against China, sparking a worldwide debate about sports bras after she whipped her shirt off in celebration.

In the motoring world, there was much excitement about the launch of the Daihatsu Naked (not), Audi’s A2 shook the supermini world, BMW kicked off a new mega-SUV trend with the X5, the Mercedes CL set a new coupe benchmark, the Citroen Xsara Picasso failed to light anyone’s fire, the Toyota Yaris first appeared and went on to decades of success and, finally, there was the Opel Zafira which placed third in the European Car of the Year vote behind the quirky Fiat Multipla and the aforementioned Yaris.

The Zafira would later come to prominence as a fire-starter of some magnitude, but in its early days it was seen merely as a revolutionary seven-seater family bus with immense practicality and smart-ish driving chops – not something the MPV genre was noted for.

Also in 1999, the Romanian government’s stab at being a car manufacturer, Dacia, was sold to Renault. After decades making piss-poor rust-buckets, Dacia suddenly got some credibility thanks to the French.

Look across the dash – and the plastics utilised, in particular – and there you are, right there in a time machine. It’s as if HG Wells himself was part of the design team.

Twenty-two years on and the link between Dacia – and particularly this week’s tester, the Duster – and the Opel Zafira might seem a little tenuous. But it is real.

The Duster has been a huge success for Dacia and its French masters largely on the basis that it allowed people who previously could only afford second-hand to buy new instead. 

It was rugged, badly fitted out, afforded terrible décor and engendered many jokes – How do you know your Dacia’s been broken into? There’s nothing missing.

But, it was also as cheap as chips to buy and to run, was eminently practical, could take a lot of physical stick without buckling and was pretty mechanically reliable too.

So, when Dacia revamped the Duster last year, there was much speculation about how much the company could ramp its image upmarket without wrecking its huge price point appeal. In this regard they have done a very good job.

The trouble is that when you first sit in the driving seat, you come over all 1999, or all Opel Zafira, to be more correct.

Such has been the level of improvement – and particularly so with regard to the interior – that Dacia has brought the car from around 977BC right up to 1999 and it seems the designers have taken much from the décor we saw back then in the Zafira.

Look across the dash – and the plastics utilised, in particular – and there you are, right there in a time machine. It’s as if HG Wells himself was part of the design team.

Aside from the tiny screen for the infotainment systems, you scan the instrumentation and the switchgear and it seems like a throwback – but it’s not. The new Duster is all-new, as car makers like to say and the interior has been completely revamped.

Given that the old décor might have fitted in nicely on Fred Flintstone’s motor, the new one is more comfortable, better equipped and, well, a lot like 1999. Take a look at some of the driver aids, for example.

In the centre of the instrumentation binnacle, there is a little indicator telling you which of the six forward gears you’re in.

The engine might have decent mid-range punch, but the suspension elements are not exactly state-of-the-art (1999, perhaps), so any willingness is tempered by limited handling and grip abilities.

When the computer decides it’s time to change up or down, a little gear lever motif appears. The first time I saw something like this? I’d say it was 1999, strangely.

And the steering column-mounted controls for the stereo? Well they were actually first seen in 1991, but they’re right here in the Duster, even if they are a little dated eight years down the road.

On the up-side the engineers have done a great job of quashing the road noise coming into the cockpit and it is estimated to be at least 50% better in this regard than on the 977BC version.

Although the look of the car is astonishingly like the one it replaces, every single panel on the new Duster is brand new and although it might be hard for the uninitiated to tell one from the other, the whole thing is fresh, although the rear light designs are lifted straight from the Jeep playbook.

On the road, the Duster is pretty good but won’t be winning any awards. The tester was the conventional 4x2 version, but there is an all-wheel drive available. Drive was to the front wheels and this means you can expect armfuls of understeer any time you press that little bit too hard.

The tester was powered by the seemingly diminutive 1.5 litre turbodiesel (from the Renault parts bin), but which – despite its meagre 113 bhp – is actually quite a decent driving proposition.

The 10.0 second 0-100 km/h time might not appear to be that great, but the top speed is 185 km/h and when you work the six-speed gearbox you can draw a surprising amount of performance from it.

A certain amount of bravery is required, however. The engine might have decent mid-range punch, but the suspension elements are not exactly state-of-the-art (1999, perhaps), so any willingness is tempered by limited handling and grip abilities.

Weigh that up, though, against the fuel consumption we recorded of 4.59 l/100 km (61 mpg) and you get a different picture – one which says that you can swallow any shortcomings because it’s not going to cost much to run.

But, you have to balance any flaws – major or minor – the Dacia might have against its price. At less than twenty-five grand, this is a package that’s not to be easily dismissed. 

It might be that that you can afford to ignore it or would never been seen dead in one because of various potential sociological pitfalls, but you cannot but agree there is a lot of car here for the money.

It might seem that it has crawled out of a hole that was dug several decades ago, but to paraphrase the words of the late, great Prince, buy a Duster and ‘tonight you can party like it’s 1999.’