DACIA DUSTER
► It might have a Romanian badge, but the Dacia Duster is as close as we’ve come to a revival of the classic Renault 4L – a simple, rugged, practical wagon that is only too happy to soak up a bit of punishment on or off-road, and doesn’t cost a lot to either buy or run in the process.
The Duster name was first used on an incredibly basic 4x4 in the mid- 1980s, but its revival in 2010 on a Nissan Qashqai-sized family SUV was much more warmly received. Nothing on the market offered quite so much car for so little money: £8995 for a 1.6-litre, frontwheel-drive petrol model in Access trim, and only a fiver under eleven grand for one with a 4x4 drivetrain. Tick every box on offer and you still had an SUV that cost less than the entry-level Qashqai.
It was a proper car too, rather than the kind of cobbled-together, third-world box of decades-old parts you might have expected for the money. Sure, entry-level Access models (charmingly dubbed ‘UN-spec’ by the press for their white paintwork, unpainted bumpers and steel wheels) were light on kit, but Dacia mainly kept the cost down through clever production, such as using well-proven Renault engines, and by sharing complicated components like doors, windows and interior fittings with other models in the range.
Launch cars featured either the 1.6 petrol or a 1.5-litre dCi turbodiesel, each offered with either front-wheel-drive or four-wheel-drive, and no automatic gearbox option. A facelift in 2013 added a 1.2-litre, direct-injection turbocharged four, while a more comprehensive facelift in 2018 shook up the engine range with a 1.3-litre turbo four and a revised, Euro 6-friendly 1.5-litre diesel joining the lineup. Initial offerings of Access, Ambience, and Laureate trim promised escalating levels of equipment, Access being for those who can live without air-conditioning and Laureate adding features as decadent as metallic paintwork and sat-nav – still for less money than a mid-range supermini. Driving a Duster is a joy, not for any particular handling prowess or straightline performance (it’s only adequate in both areas), but for an honesty and simplicity lost from most other cars of this type. Parking against a kerb won’t make you wince since there’s plenty of sidewall to the tyres, it shrugs off potholes, and the scuffs and scratches of family life don’t seem to matter as much when your interior is trimmed in hard plastic rather than expensive Alcantara.
But if the Duster is akin to a modern-day Renault 4 in spirit, then unfortunately the same can be said of some of its problems. Rust being one – early Indian-built models, especially those painted white, were poorly prepared at the factory and prone to corrosion, though Dacia sorted many of these models under warranty. Later Romanian-built cars are a safer bet. Trim can be rattly too, and Dusters aren’t imm
