Dacia Duster review: The ‘everyman’ car that's worth a spot on your driveway

Has Dacia pulled off a really neat trick with its Duster model?

I pose this question because it seems to me that the Romanian carmaker – which is, of course, owned by Renault – has achieved something which is quite a rarity in the automotive world.

Dacia appears to have made the Duster an ‘everyman’ car and that means it will decorate driveways across every socio-economic group and class.

The Volkswagen Golf was the first car of the modern era to achieve this feat and across eight generations it has mined a very fertile cross section of purchasers.

As a Volkswagen and therefore promising a certainty among buyers when it came to reliability, build quality and residual values, the Golf has fulfilled the desires and wishes of many millions of owners and became a truly classless automobile, beloved of binmen, architects, farmers, doctors and just about anyone else you could think of.

In more recent times, the Dacia Duster has gone from being the automotive equivalent of a car you’d purchase in a charity shop to being something that, because it is as cheap as chips, meets the needs of a varied cross-section of the buying public and with which all sorts of people feel comfortable having in their driveway.

Nowadays the Duster might sit alongside a Mercedes/Audi/BMW SUV in that driveway or rest there in glorious isolation as the pride of the pack in that household. It appears to matter not which end of the social spectrum is involved here as Duster owners are quite comfortable with their choice.

It might also be that at the upper end of the scale Duster buyers congratulate themselves on their savvy at buying something that can be bashed about as a second car without any undue worries; they might even let the kids actually drive it.

At the other end of the scale, the Duster is an impeccable choice because it’s cheap, provides a remarkable consumption return, is equipped with a surprising level of kit, is hardy as hell and so technologically neanderthal there’s little enough to go wrong.

So, you can see that this car has become something of a phenomenon and its popularity here is reflected in the sales charts where the Duster, as of February 28 was the 20th best seller here with a total of 478 sales. 

But unlike the Dacia Sandero, which was actually slightly higher in the sales list at 17th place, the Duster sells to a much broader demographic and sales were probably blunted by the impending arrival of this new version.

The Sandero is only for those who want just a cheap car, while Duster is purchased by those for whom the low cost is a non-essential component of their decision.

That the Duster has sold more units here this year so far than the Ford Kuga is somewhat startling, but possibly more of a sad reflection on where Ford is at in Ireland right now than anything Dacia is doing. But whatever they are doing, they are striking a chord with a hell of a lot of people.

In terms of driving dynamics, the Duster doesn’t have a lot to offer really; it is not a bad car – there are very few bad cars these days anyway – but it is not a great one either. More of that in a minute. 

The one we’re testing this week is the newest version which has been lightly facelifted (or up-styled, as is the latest phraseology), a bit of model realigning and something of a tech upgrade.

You would probably have to have Sherlock Holmes’ nose for subtle clues to notice some of the changes to the visual appearance of the car. They tricked around with the front and rear lights (thankfully ditching the Jeep copy rear ones, which were a very blatant steal), the grille and one or two other things.

They have not mick-acted around with the inherent solidity of the design and even to someone with poor eyesight, this is still obviously a Duster and, I suspect, that will actually please a lot of older Duster owners, because their model still doesn’t look that different to the new one and that’ll help anyone selling theirs when it comes to it.

The inside of the old Duster was not much cop and neither is that of the new one. Again, Dacia has footled about with a couple of things, but you can still count on the endless dreariness of plastic. 

They might have shlepped around with different types of soft-touch plastic and even thrown in new upholstery and slightly revised front seats, but if you’re looking for innovative style or fashion cues, you’ve knocked on the wrong door.

A lot of the instrumentation and switchgear look very, well, charity shop, but then again everything works and the whole no-nonsense demeanour of the Duster is reflected in the décor and the technology. 

There are, in fairness, two new multimedia systems which work well via an 8” touchscreen, but somehow look like they fell out of a Tonka Toybox.

The test version we tried was the two-wheel-drive model and it is certain to be the big seller, despite Dacia’s claims about the off-road capabilities of the 4x4 version. As such then, we had a car which performed reasonably well, albeit with a substantial dash of understeer.

In general though, it handled well and while the ride wasn’t exactly magic carpet, it was comfortable enough even on some of our worst back roads and an acceptable motorway companion.

The 1.5-litre turbodiesel engine has 115 bhp on offer and, as you might have surmised, it is not something that’s going to win you any traffic light drag race, but again it does its job with a sort of vigorous determination.

You can certainly get it stoked up and top speed is 180 km/h, but it’s going to take you quite a while to get there as the 0-100 km/h time is 10.2 seconds, which is little more than adequate rather than anywhere near blistering.

There’s not much going on in the first two of the six gears in the manual gearbox, but keep it in the rev range in third, fourth, fifth and sixth and you get a broad range of driving capability. The gearbox itself, though, is on the notchy side and takes a little getting used to.

But, on the upside the car will return a consumption figure of 4.9 litres per 100 km and – in old money – that’s pretty close to the 60 mpg mark and there’s nothing wrong with that – at all, at all.

The engine is also a little on the gruff side, by modern-day standards, but I don’t believe that’s really going to be a factor in whether people buy one or not.

All told then, the Dacia Duster is once again pressing all the right buttons when it comes to people’s needs. It is practical, hard-working, economical and reasonably enjoyable to drive and for the price being asked of it, those characteristics make it a winner.

It might not get an invitation to the Automotive Snob of the Year competition, but across a wide swathe of buyers, the Duster will find a happy home in all sorts of driveways.