In two-seat mode, our budget-priced estate proves its load-lugging ability on a camping trip to Wales
Max Edleston max.edleston@haymarket.com
Mileage 7548 List price £22,595
Target Price na Price as tested £22,595 Test economy 46.9mpg
IF LOOKS COULD kill, the one my partner shot at me when I announced that we should go on a winter camping holiday in Wales would have stopped a raging bull in its tracks. However, when I said that I’d prepare everything and she wouldn’t have to lift a finger, her mood softened, and I knew I needed to get to work while the going was still good.
Step one was to turn my Dacia Jogger from a seven-seat car into a five-seater – a task that meant removing its third row of seats entirely. Fortunately, this is easy to do, because once you’ve folded the backrests down, you simply have to pull a red toggle to release the seats. And while they aren’t especially light, they are at least relatively compact and easy to store away.
With this done, the Jogger’s boot offers lots of luggage space, but it still wasn’t quite big enough to swallow everything I intended to bring – including our tent, an air mattress, a pump for blowing up said mattress, two inflatable paddle boards, camping equipment and some chairs.
No, I needed to lose the second-row seats as well. And while these don’t come out, they do tumble forwards to nestle behind the front seats and form a kind of bulkhead like you’d find in a van. In this two-seat configuration, the Jogger swallowed all of our kit with ease.
I definitely noticed the extra weight on board when joining the motorway, and I needed to plan any overtakes more carefully than I otherwise would have with a lighter load. But by and large the Jogger managed the long journey to our destination well, with its comfortable ride soaking up all but the worst lumps and bumps.
The campsite I’d chosen was nestled in the Welsh hills, and to reach it we needed to travel along a rutted and muddy track. Fortunately, despite not having the ground clearance or four-wheel drive of some SUVs, my Jogger plodded along gamely, and soon we were parked up and ready to set up camp.
I put the Jogger to work once more, plugging my air pump into the car’s 12-volt socket to inflate our tent, mattress and paddle boards. And with that, my promise to make going camping as easy as possible was fulfilled. There were smiles all round, until
