Dacia is a Romanian brand that is part of the Renault Group and sells models in Europe with the names Duster, Logan and Sandero familiar to Russians. Last year, the brand completely revised its identity, and now it intends to change its positioning in the market: Dacia wants not only to sell entry-level cars in Europe, but also to compete with the American Jeep, which now has no competitors in European countries.
And Dacia will start with the new, third generation Duster, which is expected in 2024. With the change of generation, the crossover will become more brutal and, as the company expects, will be able to compete with the Jeep Liberty in the European market. This information was indirectly confirmed by Renault Group chief designer Laurens van den Acker. In a conversation with Autocar, he said the following: “Jeep does not have a competitor in Europe yet, so why not Dacia?”
In addition to the new Duster, Romanian Dacia is working on a larger Bigster model – it will be a C-class crossover that will not only surpass the Duster in size, but will also cost more (but still cheaper than its competitors).
In the first half of 2023, Dacia managed to achieve sales growth of 30 percent – Europeans purchased more than 290,000 cars of the Romanian brand. In terms of sales in the European market, Dacia took tenth place, overtaking Opel / Vauxhall, Fiat, Citroen, Nissan and Seat. And Dacia Sandero, in turn, entered the top three bestsellers and took second place with a score of 123,000 copies sold.
In Russia, the Duster, Logan and Sandero models were sold under the Renault brand. With the departure of the French company in 2022, imported cars, including Dacia, poured into the Russian market in parallel. So, for example, in the spring of this year, Dacia Duster went on sale – for a modification with a 1.5-liter diesel engine, a manual gearbox and all-wheel drive, the dealer asked for 2.66 million rubles.
We are parallel: “gray” novelties
