As most of you are in the US and you have a shortage of small city cars I thought some of you would be interested in this.
Dacia is a Romanian brand that are owned by Renault and generally they are what I like to refer to as 'parts bin specials'. They're built using tried and tested Renault and Nissan parts that have already had the R&D done on them. They're sold as a budget brand no-nonsense white good type of car in the UK for getting you to A-B and not a lot else. They're in quite high demand over here and as a result hold onto their value very well. They start at less than £7,000 brand new and even a 6 year old model with 70k+ will still set you back the best part of £4,000.
A little bit of history, my Wife had a 3 door 2013 VW Polo back in 2017 which we had only owned for 9 months when we found out she was pregnant. Unfortunately as we bought more and more baby-stuff in readiness for his arrival we quickly realised the Polo wasn't going to cut the mustard and we started shopping for a bigger car. We came across a 2016 Dacia Duster which is a Ford Kuga sized crossover. They are heavily based on the Nissan Juke/Rogue Sport (Quashqai in the UK) platform. Our Duster had a 1.5 litre, 4 cylinder turbo diesel engine with a 6 speed manual gearbox and 4WD. We owned ours for 2 years and it was fully dependable, albeit we only did 14,000miles in that time. It was brilliant on rubbish runs to the tip, was great when we moved house, it was great in the snow, was comfortable on long journeys and did 50+ MPG.
As the Duster was coming up to it's 3 year anniversary we popped it into Renault to have a few niggles looked at before the warranty run out. While we were waiting to pick up the Duster in the dealer my Wife started nosing around a Dacia Sandero and my Wife and I started having a conversation about it. We came to the conclusion that now our little dude is 10 months old and we no longer needed a carry cot, 10 changes of clothes, a pram and half the house that maybe it was time to change back to a smaller car. We started speaking to the salesman who let us try the babies pram in the boot and after we found out it fit we started discussing figures.
We'd paid £10,000 for the Duster and after 2 years, 14,000miles and 3 oil changes we were offered £8,650 for it.
Safe to say we bit his hand off and placed an order for a brand new Sandero.
So the Sandero itself...
It's a Fiesta sized car that's powered by a Nissan/Renault 900cc 3 cylinder turbo engine that makes 90bhp and 99lbft. It gets from standstill to 60mph in 10.2s and will go on to do 112mph. It has enough power to keep up with day to day traffic in the UK and it's an adequate performer on the motorway, it will sit quite happily at 85-90mph for hours on end and still return 40mpg. Admittedly, compared to a 1.4 or 1.6 N/A engine that would make similar power you do tend to drive it at slightly higher revs, but it makes a lovely 3 cylinder growl and even makes some little turbo noises. The engine is fairly simple too, it has a timing chain, it's port injected and the turbo is wastegate controlled.
It has A/C, sat nav, electric windows, DAB radio and a trip computer.
Oil choice is straight forward, anything that meets RN0710 or if you cannot find an oil that meets RN0710 then a 5w30 or 5w40 that meets A3/B4. I've picked to run Fuchs GT1 5w40 which is an ACEA C3 lube with LL04, 502/505/505.01, Dexos2, 229.31, 226.5 and RN0710 approval. I'll be changing out the engine and gearbox factory fill at 1000miles.
See uploaded pictures!
Dacia is a Romanian brand that are owned by Renault and generally they are what I like to refer to as 'parts bin specials'. They're built using tried and tested Renault and Nissan parts that have already had the R&D done on them. They're sold as a budget brand no-nonsense white good type of car in the UK for getting you to A-B and not a lot else. They're in quite high demand over here and as a result hold onto their value very well. They start at less than £7,000 brand new and even a 6 year old model with 70k+ will still set you back the best part of £4,000.
A little bit of history, my Wife had a 3 door 2013 VW Polo back in 2017 which we had only owned for 9 months when we found out she was pregnant. Unfortunately as we bought more and more baby-stuff in readiness for his arrival we quickly realised the Polo wasn't going to cut the mustard and we started shopping for a bigger car. We came across a 2016 Dacia Duster which is a Ford Kuga sized crossover. They are heavily based on the Nissan Juke/Rogue Sport (Quashqai in the UK) platform. Our Duster had a 1.5 litre, 4 cylinder turbo diesel engine with a 6 speed manual gearbox and 4WD. We owned ours for 2 years and it was fully dependable, albeit we only did 14,000miles in that time. It was brilliant on rubbish runs to the tip, was great when we moved house, it was great in the snow, was comfortable on long journeys and did 50+ MPG.
As the Duster was coming up to it's 3 year anniversary we popped it into Renault to have a few niggles looked at before the warranty run out. While we were waiting to pick up the Duster in the dealer my Wife started nosing around a Dacia Sandero and my Wife and I started having a conversation about it. We came to the conclusion that now our little dude is 10 months old and we no longer needed a carry cot, 10 changes of clothes, a pram and half the house that maybe it was time to change back to a smaller car. We started speaking to the salesman who let us try the babies pram in the boot and after we found out it fit we started discussing figures.
We'd paid £10,000 for the Duster and after 2 years, 14,000miles and 3 oil changes we were offered £8,650 for it.
So the Sandero itself...
It's a Fiesta sized car that's powered by a Nissan/Renault 900cc 3 cylinder turbo engine that makes 90bhp and 99lbft. It gets from standstill to 60mph in 10.2s and will go on to do 112mph. It has enough power to keep up with day to day traffic in the UK and it's an adequate performer on the motorway, it will sit quite happily at 85-90mph for hours on end and still return 40mpg. Admittedly, compared to a 1.4 or 1.6 N/A engine that would make similar power you do tend to drive it at slightly higher revs, but it makes a lovely 3 cylinder growl and even makes some little turbo noises. The engine is fairly simple too, it has a timing chain, it's port injected and the turbo is wastegate controlled.
It has A/C, sat nav, electric windows, DAB radio and a trip computer.
Oil choice is straight forward, anything that meets RN0710 or if you cannot find an oil that meets RN0710 then a 5w30 or 5w40 that meets A3/B4. I've picked to run Fuchs GT1 5w40 which is an ACEA C3 lube with LL04, 502/505/505.01, Dexos2, 229.31, 226.5 and RN0710 approval. I'll be changing out the engine and gearbox factory fill at 1000miles.
See uploaded pictures!