Battle of the bargain basement hots up with two box-fresh Dacias. Now we’ve said farewell to the Sandero Stepway, will the Duster deliver?
Why we’re running it: To see if the market’s best-value SUV, now refreshed, still embodies the Dacia ethos of functionality with affordability
Duster: Month 5 – Month 4 –Â Sandero Stepway: Month 3 –Â Month 2 –Â Month 1Â –Â Specs
Life with a Dacia Duster: Month 5
Duster’s versatility knows no bounds
I’m disappointed the threat of snow has abated, because I was desperate to test the Duster’s 4WD system and snow tyres. But this do-it-all car has done everything else: carried five people, shifted furniture, driven on wet grass, cruised lots of motorways and done urban driving and parking. Versatility is its strength; no wonder you see so many on our roads.Â
Mileage: 6174
A sound-guided speedometer – 13 April
The Duster’s transmission emits a dainty but unmissable whine at about 70mph, though this mostly disappears at other speeds. A maker of ritzier cars would probably spend big money eliminating it, but Dacia doesn’t see it as a priority. As the user, I find it a) endearing, and b) a handy kind of audible speedometer.
Mileage: 5858
Life with a Dacia Duster: Month 4
It’s diesel, it costs about £20,000 and it might just be all the car you will ever need – 30 March 2022
The Duster has already started doing that familiar Dacia thing: gobbling miles just because it’s so damned convenient and economical. As I write, the car has been here exactly two months and the mileage has climbed from 385 to just over 5000. I happen to have one of those lives in which you accumulate miles, but normally I spread them more across other cars.
The Duster is like its brethren: one of those cars that’s easiest to fall into than most – convenient enough, small enough, quick enough, quiet enough, comfortable enough, frugal enough. Chuck in the facts that when you take it places it doesn’t try to make any particular statement about you (a bonus in our trade) and that even rival designers feel able to praise its chunky styling and you have an extremely complete car. All of this for £20,000.
There was an early electronic glitch when the power steering stopped working and an array of warnings flashed up on the instrument display. However, the problem turned out to be temporary and is quite likely to have been caused by operator error. By the time Dacia’s people had taken the car away and checked it, it had reset itself and was behaving faultlessly.
When a couple of weeks later it happened again, I noted that it had followed an extended bout of traffic crawling, during which I’d developed the thoroughly undesirable habit of resting my clog on the clutch while stationary, thus not quite allowing the stop-start system to kick in. I’m now convinced my bad habit was tricking the electronics into a failure mode, especially since I’ve now stopped doing it and the car has been faultless for 3500 miles.
I’m still cogitating on the spec we chose: our Comfort 4×4 is one above bog-basic and there are two more on top with the potential to add up to £1800 to the fully built price (less towbar) of £21,040. But Comfort brings you plenty of equipment including a reversing camera, Apple CarPlay and a driver’s seat height adjuster, while keeping the extremely important (to me) 16in alloy wheels that allow the car to ride better and quieter than pricier models on 17s.
I feel no guilt about going for diesel, because every time I fill the car, my trip computer average for the 4600 miles so far – 57.3mpg – promises a 600-to-620-mile touring range. These two figures are such obvious signs of efficiency in the real world, especially in a car with a standard 4×4 facility, that I rate the Duster’s smooth and healthy 1.5-litre diesel engine as an ideal choice. In any case, you can’t have four-wheel drive without diesel in the Duster, and I’m still praying for snow so that I can properly test the 4WD traction. Living where I do, it’s looking as though I’m going to be disappointed.
The Duster is giving a decent account of itself as a motorway car, which really counts to me. It will cruise in the business-driver traffic without excessive din (even on rough bitumen, the road noise is lower than in many); and even when you cruise as fast as you feel comfortable and can get away with, you still get most of 50mpg.
The comfort is fine for me, although the Steering Committee is inclined to whinge a bit about a lack of lumbar support on long trips. And rear room is acceptable for kids, poor for adults. Lots of boot space, mind.
All said, I’m simply looking forward to more effortless miles in this prince of all-rounders. Its clearest claim to fame is that it just makes motoring simple.
Love it:
All-round ability This car displays a rare willingness to make a decent fist of anything you want, short of track days.
Loathe it:
Rear seat room Don’t expect big people to be comfortable in the back for long. Knee room is at a premium.
Mileage: 5015
Time for a change – 9 March 2022
It was one of those car-swap moments when you can’t decide whether to be disappointed or elated.
On the positive side, the sun was shining, a handsome new £21,000 Dacia Duster DCi 115 4×4 Comfort had just turned up in our drive and would be sticking around for the next few months.
The downside, and it was sizeable, was that the Dacia Sandero Stepway TCe 90 Prestige I’d been running for the previous seven months (during which I’d amassed a practical, economical, always-busy 16,000 miles) was about to drive out of my life forever. We had bonded, and I knew it was going to be tough parting.
Still, the big consolation was that I’d remain plugged into the unique Dacia ethos, a straightforwardness I’ve come to value greatly. Others make the same ‘everything you need and nothing you don’t’ claim as Renault’s highly successful budget brand, but Dacia really achieves it, following through with prices no one else is inclined to match.
You want a nice paint finish and proper panel fit? Today’s Dacia is as good as any Ford, Volkswagen or Renault. I was continually impressed by the lustre of my Stepway’s Sunset Orange metallic paint, optional for £560 (now £595), which was one of only two factory options that could be fitted to my car. The other was a £150 (now £300) full-size spare wheel. My only after-fit gadget was a towbar with a detachable goose neck (£788 as fitted), which I occasionally used to tow my motorbike trailer.
You want climate control, LED headlights or Apple CarPlay? No problem at all. But when it comes to specifying interior seat colours or trim materials, you will discover just one cost-crucifying choice – ultra-durable black fabric with light- coloured stitching. It looks perfectly modern and stylish, and ours was unmarked after 16,000 miles. On most models, you get one wheel/tyre choice – the one Dacia knows works best. It takes one minute to configure a Duster online: who would have thought having your mind made up for you could feel so liberating?
I have only one regret about the departing Stepway: in early reports, I banged on about a kink in the torque curve that introduced an annoying non-linear throttle response. It came, I discovered, from my overuse of the car’s Eco setting, a button on the dash that dulls throttle response. Ignore that facility (as I rapidly learned to do) and the effect disappears – without damaging fuel consumption in the slightest. My overall fuel mileage was 48.9mpg (the real figure undercutting the on-board trip computer by just 0.6mpg). I never used the Eco button again.Â
And so to the new Duster: as is well known, it’s a bigger car than the Sandero (4.3 metres long instead of 4.1) and the model we’ve chosen is a mid-spec Comfort that differs from the Prestige by ditching climate control in favour of perfectly decent manual air-con. It also means that rather than the Prestige’s admittedly elegant diamond-cut 17in alloys, you get an all-silver set of 16s wearing taller tyres. No bad thing, as we’ll see.
Going against fashion, I opted for the Blue DCi 115 diesel engine, producing a meagre-sounding 114bhp but redeeming the situation with a very solid 192lb ft of torque – more than any other Dacia engine offered. The diesel decision wasn’t hard: for one thing, this is the only engine available with Dacia’s excellent and  convenient 4×4 system, electrically configurable with one twist-knob in three ways: 2WD, on-demand 4WD and locked-in 4WD. For another, I knew that this docile 1.5-litre diesel machine, which has already settled into mostly rural life delivering an average 55mpg, was likely to do far less environmental harm than most cars already on the road – petrol or diesel. It has turned out to be a good decision.
This Duster has one major quirk: instead of having its six manually selected ratios spaced so that you take off from stop lights in first and reach a motorway cruise in a ‘long’ sixth, this 4×4’s first gear is a crawler intended for off-road applications, probably with permanent 4×4 and the standard hill descent control engaged. Use it in town and you’ll find it so short it will practically trip over itself, and you’ll be dead slow away from traffic lights because the engine is blaring at 20mph and you’ll have to make a very early gearchange.
To achieve normality, you must get used to starting in second gear (it takes a few of us back to revered supercars with dog-leg first-to-second shifts), which is no hardship, so long as you remember. The engine is smooth and quiet but has plenty of low-end shove and the fifth gearing is perfectly relaxed well beyond the motorway limit, so you’re never aware of a shortage of on-road ratios.
The Duster is good looking and spacious in the front and for boot space, but its rear passenger knee room is barely better than the Sandero Stepway’s. That makes it okay until your kids reach their teenage years, but it will ultimately feel confined.
My best discoveries so far have been this 4×4’s truly surprising ride quality and its fairly light but accurate steering. All Dusters ride well, having a sophistication of damping that completely belies their low prices. When you add the fact that the diesel off-roader has about 30cm more ride height (therefore suspension travel) than the 2WD models and combine this with the Comfort’s modest 16in wheels that run relatively tall 215/65 Goodyear Vector M&S tyres (with a handsome cross-cut tread pattern), you have a machine that’s quieter and more cosseting on difficult surfaces than it has any right to be.
One weird glitch so far. The electric power steering stopped working one morning, and a lot of dashboard warnings appeared. The car was recovered by the importers, but by the time it reached their home base, all had returned to normal. The Duster passed all inspections there and has been fine ever since, to the acute embarrassment of your humble servant. The mileage is already amassing fast, just as it did with the previous model, and I’m enjoying every one of them.
Second Opinion
I found it hard to overlook the rudimentary aspects of the Mk2 Duster that I ran back in 2019, but I find that its appeal grows inexorably with every passing news story of an EV that thinks it’s a smartphone. I’m interested to hear how much Steve values his Duster’s extra driven axle, as I was impressed enough by the 4×2 (petrol but also manual) that I recently tested.
Kris Culmer
Dacia Duster Blue DCi 115 4×4 Comfort specification
Specs: Price New £20,145 Price as tested £21,040 Options Metallic paint £595, spare wheel £300
Test Data: Engine 4 cyls, 1461cc, turbocharged, diesel Power 113bhp at 3750rpm Torque 191lb ft at 1750-2750rpm Kerb weight 1263kg Top speed 108mph 0-62mph 10.2sec Fuel economy 53.3mpg CO2 139g/km Faults None Expenses None
Life with a Sandero Stepway: Month 3
The only option – 17 November 2021
I’m so plugged into Dacia’s ‘all that you need and nothing that you don’t’ ethos that I tend to tell even non-car-loving friends about it quite a bit. And do you know what plays best with them? Hearing that if you buy a new Sandero Stepway TCe 90 Prestige like mine, you can specify only one option: a full-size spare wheel (replacing a tyre repair kit) for £250. They really love that.
Mileage: 12,050
Impressive economy – 27 October 2021
Concerned by problems of finding fuel, I set off on a 190-mile return trip to London from Gloucestershire, doing my best to save fuel while staying on schedule. Efforts were aided by sundry 50mph and 60mph restrictions on the M4, but the result – 75.8mpg – was still pretty good, I think. It later fell into the 60s when we struck strong headwinds.
Mileage: 11,202
Non-stop odometer – 6 October 2021
The Sandero keeps accumulating miles at breakneck speed, for two important reasons. First, it always seems to be convenient in conflicting roles, such as easily carrying four adults while fitting down narrow suburban streets. Second, it’s frugal and has a fairly big petrol tank, so it hardly ever seems to need refuelling, which is especially handy in the present circumstances.
Mileage: 10,340
Life with a Sandero Stepway: Month 2
Not so lesser-spotted any more – 18 August 2021
I’m starting to see new-shape Sanderos all over the place – and a lot of them in the bronze hue of mine that suits it so well. People you meet in a Dacia treat you in two different ways: those who appreciate its great value are respectful, while the quick and impatient imagine you will hold them up – or perhaps they just want to pass you for reassurance that it was worth all that extra money.
Mileage: 7464
Rugged, value-brand supermini proves its do-it-all credentials – 11 August 2021
The Sandero Stepway has been acquiring mileage hand over fist, for a couple of excellent reasons. First is our extra dependence nowadays on reporting-by-driving jobs around the country, rather than day trips via Heathrow to Germany or France (an excellent development, in my opinion).
Second is the Stepway’s do-everything nature: it’s small enough to fit into tight traffic gaps and parking spaces suitable only for superminis, yet it’s roomy enough in the rear (partly because it’s taller) to accommodate full-size adults, with enough boot space for their stuff.
Even if you have access to other cars, you tend to grab the Dacia because it’s convenient. Its cheerful and willing nature means it’s always ready. The result is that I’ve amassed close to 7000 miles since it arrived in early May, and that progression doesn’t look like stopping.
One frustration is that I haven’t managed to get the trip computer’s running fuel economy figure to the 50mpg that my initial gentle treatment promised. It seems to have settled at 48.9mpg and hardly changes whatever I do. But that figure matters even less now, because recent accurate checks of the fuel computer’s veracity have established that it’s exactly 1mpg optimistic, so the real running figure is 47.9mpg.
That’s still excellent for a car I’ve used for absolutely everything, even towing my motorbike trailer with an (admittedly light) old Douglas on the back.
It still amuses me that this ultraaffordable car, for which you can get only two options (metallic paint and a full-size spare wheel), has automatic lights and wipers, climate control, auto walk-away locking and an autorelease electric handbrake – plus a knurled gear knob, just like a Bentley.
Given that the Stepway is performing so well, it’s not hard to understand the truth of Dacia’s claim that this is Europe’s most popular privately bought (as opposed to business fleet) car. Maybe business fleets need to get with the programme as well.
One recent interesting episode was spending a week in a Renault Clio powered by the same 1.0-litre petrol turbo engine as the Dacia’s – and riding on the same platform – to clock the differences. The fact that the Stepway has a slightly lumpier ride and creates a bit more road noise is understandable enough, given that there looks to be £3000-ish extra value in it. But you have to wonder which came first: refinements to the Renault’s platform and engine to make them quieter and smoother or deliberate omissions of sound-deadening measures to create a small but noticeable difference.
The only meaningful fault I can find with the Dacia, given its great price and equipment and decent quality, is the lumpy engine response, which includes a gigantic flat spot around 2800rpm that you can never quite ‘drive around’. In the Clio, interestingly, the same was present, but it was far less noticeable, causing me to wonder again whether my own car’s electronics would benefit from some sort of reprogramming.
Enough readers have now raised this issue, either through ownership or on test drives, to convince me that it’s a genuine foible of the Sandero Stepway. Before I write about it again, I’m going to lift the phone and establish whether a cure exists. If it doesn’t, it probably should.
Love it:Â Outrageous value
This sector is supposed to be stuffed with alternatives, but you won’t find another car with this much capability for the money.
Loathe it:Â Engine response
The engine trips over itself at 2800rpm. It’s smooth, economical and strong, but its progression through the range needs attention.
Mileage: 7688
Life with a Sandero Stepway: Month 1
We compare old and new Stepways to see how far it has come – 21 July 2021
When we road-tested the Dacia Sandero Stepway a few months ago, the verdict was so effusive (not the perfect car but much better than you would expect for the money) that we started wondering exactly how big the upward step had been to this all-new model, utilising its modern Renault Clio platform.
Dacia, not remotely shy about helping us quantify the scale of its improvement, happily sent a previous Stepway for assessment, similarly powered to our TCe 90 but on a now- outmoded platform. Immediately obvious were that car’s much- discussed lack of rear knee room and less comfortable ingress/egress, despite there being only millimetres of difference in the overall package.
This old-versus-new thing was especially beguiling when we made an on-paper list of what the two cars have. They’re remarkably similar. The real differences are in execution: the new car looks classier and much more modern. The fuller, more sculpted body sections give it far more presence; it’s less willing to ‘know its place’ in the car firmament.
Proof that the new Stepway is as attractive as any supermini lies in the fact that people who don’t study car brand hierarchy simply see no status difference between this latest Dacia and, say, the Volkswagen Polo. The previous Stepway was much more styled to stay in its pigeonhole.
Such differences continue into the cabin. A knurled metal gearknob in the latest Stepway is a dig at sellers of much more high-tone cars. Clever use of fabric-covered hard plastic softens it in the eye of the beholder, while saving money. The central screen is as businesslike and well executed as that in many a pricier supermini.
With a sensibly sized and shaped wheel and low-effort input, the steering competes well with better cars’, too, whereas its ancestor is fairly vague. Only after many miles do you notice a few foibles. Just sometimes, around the straight- ahead, it does some minor tramlining and lacks a bit of precision.
On our favourite B-road, the old Dacia is softer but also less well controlled. The new one is more chuckable, cornering neutrally even in very long bends taken hard. The differences also show in ride quality. The new car is night-and-day f latter and better controlled, although there are still times when it feels it could do with more wheel travel and better control at the extremities. While both 1.0-litre turbo three-pots are remarkably smooth, the new car has noticeable cut-in noise intrusion and footwell vibration.
These differences won’t matter to everyone. For the many to whom the price is the be all, such shades of difference barely have significance. But for those with an Autocar-led order of priorities, there’s a big step up in driver appeal: the new edition is constantly enjoyable to drive.
But the nub of the matter is more fundamental. Whereas the previous Stepway was content to undercut its supermini peers and be happy with that, the new one offers at least the same price advantage yet is quite prepared to challenge its betters anyway. That approach gives the car a powerful and enduring appeal.
Love it:Â Plenty of presence
Dacia’s designers have found ways to modernise the Stepway’s shape and toughen its character.
Loathe it:Â Engine flat spots
It’s smooth and quite powerful, but the engine’s uneven mid-range response can be annoying.
Mileage: 6262
Three cylinders, one litre, 89bhp: what more could you want? – 7 July 2021
One of the enduring fascinations of the new Sandero Stepway is just how much all-round capability is delivered by its modest 89bhp 1.0-litre three-pot turbo engine. You can cruise as quickly as the others on motorways with a decent amount of shove left in case you need it and you can thrum smoothly along right at the bottom of the rev range in traffic.
The price you pay (if price is the right word) is gear-changing. You’re in top gear far less than you would be in a car with, say, a 1.5-litre engine.
Sixth is geared at over 28mph per 1000rpm, which means you never select it until you’re doing 50mph- plus. You spend a lot of time in third, fourth and fifth, which seems wrong at first, because you think it’s going to blow a hole in your fuel consumption. Only it doesn’t. We’re averaging a tad under 50mpg, and I’m using the revs more freely now than ever. But why doesn’t the tacho have a redline?
My gripe about engine flat spots persists, but with familiarity you drive around it. The bottom line is that I’m enjoying the car. Every single day, I like comparing the modesty of its name and price with its excellent all-round delivery. It’s easy to see why so many private buyers choose the Sandero.
Mileage: 5235
One key feature – 30 June 2021
The Stepway’s key card is turning out to be an unexpected boon. I love the way you don’t have to remember to lock the car – when paying in filling stations, for example. I was initially worried about losing the card (feeling it there was no substitute
for the reassuring rattle of a regular key), but if you keep it in your wallet, there’s never a problem.
Mileage: 4398
Welcoming the Sandero to the fleet – 23rd June 2021
I have to admit that it was quite a change. Going from a £200,000-plus Bentley Bentayga with a blizzard of classy but pricey options to a Dacia Sandero Stepway Prestige priced at £14,605 – including the only two offered extras, metallic paint at £560 and a £150 spare wheel – is the kind of step that a real car buyer never makes. But I was really looking forward to it.
For one thing, our road testers had already established that the Dacia is a very decent car according to the ‘fitness for purpose’ criterion that guides all well-founded verdicts. And Dacia’s own sales experience across Europe, which has established the Sandero as the most bought retail car going, was irresistible. I have a weakness for simple, affordable cars, and so do 1.3 million Sandero buyers (around 10% of them British).
Not that I’m truly slumming it, even in Dacia terms. The Stepway Prestige sits right at the top of the Sandero pole. The cheapest Sandero hatchback costs a shade under £8000, and even the taller and better-equipped entry-level Stepway is just £11,500.
Sure, our Prestige model bristles with what others regard as options (8.0in touchscreen, LED headlights, reversing camera, electronic parking brake and keyless entry), but all of that comes in the price. And as well as saving money, it also spares you the trouble of understanding a complex range and the time of filling in a fiddly form when your choices might be wrong. Dacia does the job for you.
Right from the off, the Stepway has overdelivered. Its £560 paint – in lively Desert Orange – has been applied with a quality that would distinguish the panels of a Ford or a Volkswagen. Which is to say very well. The car looks modern, well proportioned and eye-catching. The many people who don’t know Dacia as a value brand presume the Stepway carries a far bigger price than it does. Get familiar with this car and you soon start wondering why people spend so much on other makes.
The Stepway came our way with 1400 gentle miles already on the clock, and though its tiny turbo triple engine is naturally free-revving, it felt rather tight. At that stage, it was delivering around 46mpg (praiseworthy enough, you might think), but now that the engine (and gearbox) are better run-in, we’re much more used to seeing 50mpg and occasionally a bit more. This means the car has an easy touring range of 350 miles, yet it costs less than £45 to fill. No matter what your state of wealth, these are heart-warming figures.
The prospect of spending much of my driving life behind an 89bhp, 999cc three-cylinder engine didn’t excite much at first, but it has turned out to be a remarkably easy thing to do, especially since there are plenty of ratios, including a gratifyingly long-legged sixth that doesn’t really work below 50mph. The engine pulls surprisingly well at lower speeds, but spins so smoothly into the 5000s that such use is routine. It has become routine on another count, too.
Our car’s main foible is a rather uneven torque delivery at lower speeds. It promises plenty from around 2000rpm but there’s an annoying flatspot around 2500rpm, which means one minute you’re getting too little, but by the time you get to 3000rpm, you’re getting too much. You can drive around it by staying further up the rev range (there’s almost no noise penalty and the six-speed gearchange is fun to use), but a more linear power delivery would be welcome and might deliver even better economy. When there’s time and the car has a few more miles under its belt, I might consult the service people to see if it makes sense to reprogramme the ECU.
On all other counts, the Stepway is faring well. It’s well built (I’ve cured the one and only dashboard buzz), and I’ve become used to niceties like the reversing screen and the Apple CarPlay capability. The seats are comfortable and appear especially great at the price. People comment on the impressive look of the fascia, unaware that it simply uses a durable fabric to cover hard plastic. It stands for Dacia’s resourceful approach to life: we can’t afford expensive stuff so we’re going to make affordable stuff work hard for its living. And so far I see absolutely no durability penalty evident or on the horizon.
Three Stepway features I love above all others. First is the way you can detach and refit the standard roof rails across the car to make a roof rack, for which you would pay extra on almost any other car. Second is the convenient keyless locking and unlocking, considered a luxury feature on a Range Rover. Third and best is the well-executed knurling of the gearlever knob, an especially amusing feature, because the makers of my previous Bentley claim knurling as an emblem of quality.
In a way, this modest metal detail stands for the whole car. It eats other manufacturers’ lunches. It sets out deliberately to reward buyers who are not brand conscious, and the benefits are real. I have warmed already to the Dacia ethos and am bonding with the Stepway as the miles roll easily by.
Second Opinion
I spent a day in the Cropley Dacia and liked it a lot. Dead easy to rub along with and, thanks to things like the natty fabric trim and the quiet drivetrain, you’re never over-aware that it’s a budget car. I don’t remember the throttle hesitation on other Sanderos I’ve tried, mind.
Matt Prior
Dacia Sandero Stepway TCe 90 Prestige specification
Specs: Price New £13,895 Price as tested £14,605 Options Metallic paint £560, spare wheel £150
Test Data: Engine 3 cyls in line, 999cc, turbocharged, petrol Power 90bhp Torque 118lb ft Kerb weight 1096kg Top speed 107mph 0-62mph 11.9sec Fuel economy 50.4mpg CO2 127g/km Faults None Expenses None
Source: Autocar
