Tag Archives: Dacia

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Dacia Turns Its SUVs into a Budget Observatory on Wheels

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Leave it to Dacia to look at the booming overlanding craze, shrug at the six-figure expedition rigs clogging Instagram, and say: What if camping was just… simple? The Romanian brand’s latest idea, charmingly dubbed the “Million Star Hotel,” is less about rooftop tents and titanium cookware and more about sleeping inside your car while the universe puts on a show overhead.

The concept centers on Dacia’s biggest SUV yet, the Bigster, a 4.57-meter-long slab of practical ambition that finally offers enough interior real estate to make car camping feel intentional rather than desperate. The star of the show—literally and figuratively—is the factory-designed Sleep Pack, an optional setup that turns the Bigster’s cargo area into a two-person bedroom with a view of the cosmos.

The Sleep Pack isn’t exclusive to the Bigster; it also fits the Duster and Jogger, reinforcing Dacia’s talent for stretching one clever idea across an entire lineup. At its core is a 190-centimeter double mattress that unfolds across the boot floor and folded rear seats. When morning comes—or when you need your SUV back—the mattress detaches and tucks neatly into a bespoke wooden storage box.

Headroom is, predictably, snug. But the Bigster’s panoramic sunroof makes that a feature rather than a flaw. Instead of staring at headliner fabric, you fall asleep watching the stars wheel overhead, separated from deep space by a thin sheet of glass. The wooden base doubles as a small table, with storage compartments underneath for the essentials: flashlights, snacks, and whatever else you forgot to pack because you assumed “it’s just one night.”

Dacia’s big reveal happens February 25 and 26 in Scotland’s Galloway Forest Park, one of the UK’s officially designated dark-sky zones. Far from city glow and light pollution, guests will camp overnight beneath a rare celestial alignment. If the weather cooperates—and that’s always the fine print in Scotland—Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury will all be visible to the naked eye.

This isn’t just a lie-down-and-stargaze affair. Dacia is leaning into the outdoorsy fantasy with open-fire cooking, kayaking, and fishing. And while the Sleep Pack doesn’t magically add plumbing, the brand will provide on-site facilities, including a large communal tent with basic amenities. Think glamping-adjacent, minus the pretense.

Bookings for the “Million Star Hotel” are open until January 28 through a dedicated website, with spots allocated by lottery. Requirements are refreshingly straightforward: UK residency, a valid driver’s license, and ideally someone you don’t mind sharing a mattress with. Each vehicle sleeps two adults, so bringing a guest is encouraged.

For those who don’t win the stargazing sweepstakes—or who just want to turn their own Dacia into a weekend escape pod—the Sleep Pack is available to buy. The mattress and wooden box retail for £1,307. Add blackout curtains for £175 and a tent for £350, and the full InNature Camping Kit totals £1,830.

In classic Dacia fashion, it’s not luxurious, it’s not flashy, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t. But in a world where “adventure” often comes with a luxury price tag, the idea of parking an affordable SUV in the middle of nowhere and watching the planets drift by feels refreshingly honest. Sometimes, the best hotel really does have a million stars—and no minibar.

Source: Dacia

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Dacia Bets on Choice with Dual A-Segment EV Strategy

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Dacia is about to pull off a neat little trick in the bargain-basement EV space—sell two electric city cars at the same time and make it look intentional.

In the coming months, the Renault-owned brand will unveil a new A-segment EV based on the upcoming electric Twingo, with a public debut locked in for the Paris motor show this September. It’ll hit European showrooms by year’s end with a targeted starting price below €18,000 (about £15,000), which already sounds like a mic drop in today’s inflation-happy EV market. But here’s the twist: the new car won’t immediately replace the Spring. Instead, Dacia plans to keep both on sale, making it the only automaker willing to hedge its city-EV bets so openly.

Think of it as the Clio-and-Sandero playbook, but electrified. The new entry-level EV borrows heavily from the Twingo’s bones, yet wears bespoke Dacia styling and undercuts its Renault cousin on price. Officially, it’s positioned as the Spring’s successor—but Dacia’s bosses are quick to point out that succession doesn’t necessarily mean eviction.

“They are still quite different,” said Dacia product chief Patrice Lévy-Bencheton, hinting that the distinction will be obvious once the car is revealed. Size and shape will do some of the differentiating work. At roughly 3.8 meters long and 1.7 meters wide, the new model will be slightly larger than the Spring and match the Twingo footprint. Design-wise, early previews suggest a radical shift, ditching city-car cuteness in favor of the chunky, pseudo-4×4 aesthetic that’s become a Dacia calling card.

That extra presence comes with a price bump. The new EV is expected to start around £15,000—roughly £3,000 more than the cheapest Spring. Even so, both cars will live in the same A-segment, aimed at urban buyers who care less about Nürburgring lap times and more about monthly payments.

According to Lévy-Bencheton, the overlap will last about a year, with the Spring being phased out market by market depending on incentives, regulations, and demand. Translation: Dacia will let customers vote with their wallets.

Sales and marketing boss Frank Marotte was even more blunt. The cars will sit at different price points, wear different designs, and then—shrug—“we’ll figure out what the customer will buy.” Refreshingly honest, that.

There’s also a geopolitical subplot here. The Spring is essentially a rebadged Renault City K-ZE, built in China and lightly adapted for Europe. That means it’s now subject to the EU’s hefty tariffs on Chinese-built EVs. The new model, by contrast, was designed in Europe for European buyers and will likely be built alongside the Twingo in Slovenia. No tariffs, better margins, fewer political headaches.

What makes this strategy particularly odd—in a good way—is the timing. Dacia has just given the Spring a significant refresh for 2026, despite it entering its seventh year on sale and staring down its so-called replacement. Power is up across both drivetrains, with the top version now delivering 101 horsepower. Charging speeds have improved. Suspension tweaks promise better handling. In short, Dacia addressed many of the Spring’s most common European complaints just months before introducing another car to steal its thunder.

Marotte admits it looks strange. Updating a car this late in its life cycle usually signals either desperation or indecision. But Dacia insists it’s about protecting residual values and keeping the Spring commercially relevant in an EV market that moves at smartphone speed.

“In the BEV world, if you want to sustain your residual values, you need to upgrade your product,” Marotte said. Fall behind on tech, and depreciation comes fast and hard. Dacia’s solution? Keep upgrading, even if the replacement is already waiting in the wings.

The result is an unusual but very on-brand strategy: maximum choice, minimum pretension, and prices that still feel like a rebuke to the rest of the industry. Two electric city cars, one showroom, and a sales team tasked with letting the market sort it out. In today’s EV landscape, that might be the most radical idea of all.

Source: Dacia

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Bring Back the Box: Why the MPV Deserves a 2026 Comeback

Does your washing machine come with a raised ride height? Would you pay extra for a storage unit with a rakish roofline? Do your Amazon parcels arrive sporting flared wheel arches and a “sport” trim badge? Of course not. When it comes to moving people and stuff, the truth is stubbornly simple: boxy works. Always has.

And yet, family-car buyers in the UK—and pretty much everywhere else—have collectively decided that what they really need is an SUV. A tall one. A chunky one. Preferably with fake skid plates and wheels that look like they were borrowed from a Tonka truck. In making that choice, they’ve traded space efficiency and real-world practicality for something they believe looks fashionable. Whether SUVs are still “cool” when literally everyone, including your grandmother and her bridge club, drives one is very much up for debate.

What’s beyond debate is what we lost along the way.

The Multi-Purpose Vehicle—long the unsung hero of family transport—has been pushed to the margins. Once-familiar names like Zafira, Galaxy, Picasso, and Voyager have quietly slipped into history. Even the Renault Scenic, for years the poster child of sensible European family motoring, has shape-shifted into an SUV. If you want a new MPV today, your options are mostly limited to vans with windows and seats bolted in.

To be fair, modern van-based people movers are far better than their ancestors. They’re refined, surprisingly decent to drive, and massively practical. But no matter how plush the seats or how clever the infotainment, there’s still a lingering school-minibus vibe you can’t quite shake.

Which is why a recent six-month stint with Volkswagen’s ID. Buzz felt like a reminder from the past—and maybe a postcard from the future. Yes, there’s a Cargo version, but crucially the Buzz is based on a passenger-car EV platform, not a commercial vehicle shell. And it proves something MPV fans have known all along: if your goal is to fit people and their belongings inside a vehicle, nothing beats a purpose-built box on wheels.

The Buzz isn’t perfect, and it isn’t cheap, but its basic philosophy is spot-on. Upright sides. A tall roof that’s actually usable. Seating that works with the laws of physics instead of against them. You don’t climb up into it or fall down out of it—you just get in. What a concept.

Encouragingly, there are signs that manufacturers might be rediscovering this forgotten logic. Kia has rolled out the PV5. Lexus sells the ultra-luxurious LM. Volvo has the EM90. In China, premium MPVs like the Zeekr Mix and Denza D9 are thriving, quietly proving there’s real demand for vehicles that prioritize space, comfort, and flexibility over aggressive styling cues. Mercedes is also lining up the VLE, another signal that the segment isn’t as dead as it once appeared.

The catch? Most of these are large, expensive, or aimed at markets outside the UK. But shrink those ideas down. Make them affordable. Pitch them as mid-size family cars rather than luxury lounges. Do that, and it’s not hard to imagine serious sales volume.

Which brings us to a modest proposal: 2026 should be the year of the MPV revival.

Not the dowdy, beige boxes of old, but modern, intelligently designed people movers that lean into what they do best. Cars with genuinely flexible seating systems, sliding doors that make school runs painless, clever storage solutions, and interiors that can morph from family shuttle to DIY hauler in minutes. Wrap it all in clean, understated styling, and suddenly “practical” doesn’t have to mean “boring.”

SUVs, after all, have become the cane toads of the automotive ecosystem. They evolved an early advantage—buyers liked the look, manufacturers liked the margins—and promptly multiplied until they crowded out nearly everything else. Now the market is awash with big faces, bluff noses, and vehicles that promise adventure but rarely venture beyond a speed bump.

The MPV can be the antidote. It’s more useful than an SUV unless you genuinely go off-road. It’s more honest about its mission. And unlike SUVs, it isn’t burdened with awkward questions about efficiency penalties, unnecessary weight, or why you need all-wheel drive to do the weekly shop.

Most of all, more MPVs would bring something the family-car market sorely lacks: choice. Real choice. Not just the same tall hatchback in slightly different outfits.

While we’re at it, let’s also bring back a few estates. But that’s a crusade for another day.

For now, the message is simple. The box was never the problem. We just forgot how good it was.

Source: Auto Express