Dacia Logan MCV

And the low-cost market gets the spotlights once again. Since Dacia needed to update its line with this new generation which debuted last year, it took the opportunity to also rearrange these vehicles, investing in new categories to satisfy new customers and improving the existing competitors. It’s interesting to notice that the Romanian automaker’s worry with cheap prices doesn’t stop it of releasing its vehicles in style: sedan and hatchback arrived in the last Paris Motor Show, and now the wagon has used the Swiss event to join them.

That mentioned rearrangement can be explained as nothing but the most natural strategy for a smart automaker who really wants to prosper. The original Logan arrived in 2004 only as a sedan, but didn’t take long to achieve great sales. The natural response to this event is to increase the offer, not only at the sedan’s trims but at new models projected as Logan’s variations, in order to extend this name’s acceptance to more products. On the other hand, it was still needed to dimension how far the public was really willing to purchase low-cost vehicles instead of migrating to Renault’s line. The only way to diversify the offer without raising the costs too much was to adapt the sedan into the new categories, which was done as Sandero, MCV and Pick-up. The first ones were so successful that motivated Dacia to create the first “out-of-the-box” sibling: Duster now reaches its third year of nice sales both under Dacia and Renault, according to the market. There were so many great news that this family’s second phase needed bigger plans: defending “the Logans” from the improving rivals would need an even better offer, which started with two new members: Lodgy and Dokker made Dacia enter respectively into minivan and multivan/cargo categories. Both hatchback and sedan were already renewed, the pick-up is expected to follow them soon, but the station wagon had to receive some corrections.

Have you ever seen the first Logan MCV? Everything in that car seemed to scream the intention of working both as a station wagon and as a van, despite of Logan’s city-car dimensions. But if the second generation received a minivan to attend those with big families and a multivan for cargo transport, MCV was freed to be only a conventional SW… and to finally have decent styling. There were abandoned both the two-part vertical rear door, and the very weird “partially higher roof”, higher only at the central section in order to keep the sedan’s front doors. That’s what makes the second phase even more attractive than these pictures show. The elegant lines magnify the 14.7-ft length, which encloses the 20.2-cu-ft trunk which can achieve 53.6 cu-ft by folding the rear seats – which are only five now, to avoid competing with both the mentioned new vans. However, the car’s front half doesn’t deny the Logan genes, whose imponent lines and modern construction may not bring too much sophistication but ensure a secure and spacious vehicle. It’s possible to see the several internal storage areas compose a very practical room along with typical items such as infotainment system with a console touchscreen. This car will arrive in Europe next April featuring the sedan’s engines: with diesel there’s dCi 1.5L with 90 hp, while using gasoline it’s possible to choose between 75-hp 1.2L and 90-hp TCe 0.9L, with five-speed manual transmission.

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Dacia Logan and Sandero 2

Haven’t you noticed that even though the automakers often leave the official release of their latest cars to the international shows, they’ve started to make their first presentations weeks, sometimes months before? This strategy comes in handy for the simple fact that at the effective shows there are dozens of other cars being revealed at the same time, so making their first appearance only at this moment results in attracting much less attention than expected. Dacia knows that, so now is its time to get the spotlights.

The Logan family’s value for the Renault group is beyond huge, specially for Dacia division. It started at 2004 already as a big surprise, because until then this brand was taking too much seriously the low-budget concept: excepting some participation of the 1990s sedan Nova, which was later renamed as SupeRNova and as Solenza after a face-lift, their main product was 1310, which in turn was the “modernized” version of 1300 – they forced a 1990s front design into a sedan who first appeared, also as Renault 12, in 1969! But this story was about to take an enormous change. Renault projected another low-cost sedan but way more modern, precisely in order to replace 1310, but it ended accomplishing much more than that. Logan surprised the world for its intense focus at lowering the production costs with square and objective design, flat glasses and even its initial rearview mirrors, which were the same piece with symmetrical design to fit both sides. But this odd exterior covered an amazing interior space, which took five occupants so easily that this car started to sell really well. It didn’t took long for Dacia to expand this concept into station wagon, pick-up, cargo and even crossover versions, all of them sold with big success.

In fact, this success became so notorious that started to attract foreign attention. The emergent markets from outside Europe, captained by Brazil, had the clever idea of selling them under another brands in order to provide enough brand reliability wherever Dacia wasn’t present. One of the results of that is Brazil selling Logan and Duster with Renault’s badge and even creating Sandero, which also went to Europe and joined the family at the now huge sales success, at their price levels. Dacia became strong as a low-budget brand, and the Logan family strong as a modern, spacious and non-expensive line of cars, but with one constant complaint: the excessive simplicity. Sandero and Duster at least were born with different style each one at its own way, but it was only a disguise to Logan’s by far biggest problem. If it wasn’t to commercial buyers, it was really hard to sell a car that basic and non-attractive even for a small price. The sales weren’t really stopped by that, but the concern was real. Some years passed and they started to receive the half-life face-lift, but no miracles could be expected. But now they came to the second generation, entirely redesigned and improved, precisely to reduce the flaws and take the best of the original concept to a whole new level.

Logan, Sandero and Duster made an important influence at their respective markets. Although they don’t seduce the ones who wish a beautiful car, their internal space was so big that made all their rivals start to improve themselves at this factor more than originally thought – this can be proved if you take a look at all their youngest competitors’s sales argument list. Therefore, if those three cars raised the bar that high, their next step would have to be big. So how big is to start mentioning that they now share platform with the medium-sized Renault Fluence? This fact is the best start point to explain why you must’ve had the (true) impression that they became much bigger. Dacia deserves the highest compliments for the design section, and for many reasons. The first one is that they not only created new cars who remind their respective previous phases, but also maintained the good parts while erasing the bad ones. Details such as the doors lines and windows and shields scheme weren’t visually changed while the entire body had a better design scheme, adapting what was visually kept to what is new to obtain more harmony. Besides that, a pleasant surprise is that Logan and Sandero, until now only them, finally recognized they belong to the same family: the front design is now the same, as done with most of the hatchbacks and sedans in similar case.

This results at a better and even more elegant style for Logan, while Sandero now stops to look so different from the family, but there’s another reason for doing this. Yes, one more compliment comes for the cleverness at using that as an implicit excuse to improve the parts sharing. From now on, the interior still is the same for both of them but also the entire exterior’s first half, including the front doors – Dacia even found a tail light design who fit two rear styles that different maintaining the visual balance. Until now there aren’t lots of information about them, but the interior surely became even more spacious, due to the new structure. The central console is a good way to show that the evolution at the interior was more at the technology than in design, featuring a big touchscreen to control the sound system and some other functions. When it comes to the engines, it is known that they’ll bring the 1.5 dCi at three power levels, but the gasoline option will be made by the 1.2 TCe of 115 hp. Of course, both these cars are intensely expected to be sold at the emergent markets as soon as possible.

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Dacia Dokker

Now the European market can have access to the latest Dacia unveiled, whose first appearance was made at the last Geneva Auto Show. A first look wouldn’t take much to classify it only as one more of the multi-purpose vehicles we see every day, but this one has some points who deserve more attention. Some for being interesting, and others for being just curious, but the fact is that it only takes to consider this car philosophy, more than only its commercial proposal, to discover these Romanian vans’ true shine.

It’s widely known that many big automakers divide themselves at different brands, also called divisions. They use this strategy to offer a bigger variety without making its image too confusing, and this concern is way more important than one can think at a first sight. The image a brand makes for itself means how it’s going to be seen and received by the public, and the car industry has shown a lot of examples of this almost since its beginning – Ferrari, Iveco, Lancia and Maserati are all Fiat Group’s brands, for instance. Working this way allows a better offer because each brand gets only one public to dedicate attention for: from their cars to even their dealerships, everything can be designed only to the wealthier customers or the fans of sports car’s, trucks’… This is much better than trying to sell a limousine and a cheap pick-up truck at the same showroom. This strategy is precisely what maintains Dacia through the years, and most recently started to give it bigger attention from this industry – the low-budget Renault-Nissan division learned not to only take a car from those two and cut off its equipments in order to sell it at a much lower price.

Since the Logan family achieved worldwide success, Dacia decided to expand this sedan’s concept to get itself an entire new line based on it. So we could use any other of its cars and the text wouldn’t be different. Dokker doesn’t obtain its low price from offering just a metal box with engine, seats and wheels; it comes because its whole concept expresses practicality. The front end has only the headlight sets and two air intakes, without chrome-painted details or more folds and cuts than necessary. In fact, by this part it can be already noticed that Dokker came from the Lodgy minivan’s project – fenders, headlights and hood are the same. But when it comes to the side, haven’t you noticed the next shared part? Yes, those front doors were also took from Lodgy, and this is the best example of what Dokker has to offer. Those doors are shorter than this car would require, but Dacia decided to adapt the rest of this portion to save money producing one more exclusive part, rather than build a new one whose gain at beauty would also be translated into a bigger cost. And this is what guide this van: there’s no intention of being sophisticated or sporty or to win design awards, but being cheap and reliable. Practical.

This clean design ends at a rear part whose design has the pleasant reminder of Logan Van, especially at the rear glass between the vertical lights with a black part above them – that station wagon isn’t the most charming car either, but maintaining visual identity is usually good. But Dokker’s main focus there was to get an asymmetrical door. This is more useful at the cargo version because it makes the loading process easier when the space is little, but this matter can be better solved with the sliding right door brought at any version. If the interior has to deal with the conventional window opening only at the front doors, it allows itself to pamper the occupants with a LCD touchscreen to control the multimedia sound system and by letting them choose the secondary color of console and seats, which contrast is always made with black. Dokker’s production is made at Tangier (Morocco), but with main focus at the European market. About the engines, it uses 1.2 TCe, 1.6 and 1.5 dCi, only the last one using diesel. The passengers version can take five or seven occupants, while the cargo version uses only the front seats and covers the rear windows.

This car gets bigger importance at the worldwide context because Renault has started to sell Dacia cars to emergent markets too. But at those countries the strategy has to change: since the Romanian brand doesn’t work in them, using it would demand an entire implementation process whose costs would be unreasonable. Therefore, it results better to rely at Renault’s already built tradition an sell the new cars under this name. And that begins to explain that Dokker is the most likely car to take Kangoo’s place at those markets. Now they’re still producing its older generation or even have stopped it, but in both cases it’s not worth to bring the most recent one because besides of the many advances and their additional cost which would be unbearable there, Kangoo’s focus was always different. It still has cheaper and cargo versions, but that weird design of the 1990s used the following generation to evolve. It got much more emotional, with a humour touch to please the younger public, who tend to like versions as the two-door Be Bop and the electric one. So Dokker clearly is the better one to take the emergent markets, who asks much more for a non-expensive passenger car or working van. Who needs a car to be spacious reliable, efficient… Practical.

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