Few cars are cheaper. Those things are, in many places on the internet, considered trash because they don’t have billions of horsepower or don’t have much sex appeal. The internet can be wrong about a lot of things. The Dacia Sandero is a cheap car and it’s a pretty charming little egg. James May backed the original and I bet he’ll dig into the latest example you see here.
At 12,155 pounds ($15,000 more at current rates) before options, the Sandero isn’t terribly expensive. The one I tested costs £14,945, or about $18,500, with Expression TCe 90 specs with metallic paint and an optional spare wheel. If you’re diligent, you can pick up a monthly deal for (after scouring Google) as little as £140 a month – roughly the amount a 20-year-old spends on beer every Friday night in London. For hard-earned money, you get… not much, but enough: Five seats, 11.6 cubic feet (39 cubic feet with seats down) trunk, five-speed gear lever, 91 horsepower, 118 lb-ft 1.0 2-liter engine, nice infotainment screen (with CarPlay and Android Auto), air conditioning, and so on. So far, positive A Car then.
The lack of bells and whistles can be a bit confusing, especially in an age where if your car doesn’t have an AI that tracks your every bowel movement, or doesn’t claim it will drive itself (even if the driver doesn’t know what to do). that’s not entirely true) it is considered to be behind the times. However, Dacia is not all about keeping up with the Joneses crap, and never will be. Its mission is to create good, practical, affordable cars for people who need transportation, not decorations for people with empty lives to brag about on Instagram.
In terms of styling, there isn’t too much to say about the Sandero. It’s a small hatchback, and looks just like you’d expect. There is a hood with a motor underneath that is attached to a box. Dacia’s recent logo change adds a few neat details — the DC badging on the muzzle draws your attention, and the brand name on the trunk lid stands out. Its head and taillights have some interesting details, but otherwise it’s a box with wheels. If you are going to design a car to blend into the background of a GTA game, this is what you will end up with.
Inside it is insignificantly similar. There’s plenty of cost-friendly plastic, manual controls for A/C, a simple control panel with analog dials, fabric seats, and plenty of little holes for the actual stuff. Once again, the new branding offers some shiny touches — accents of the new logo reflected in the HVAC vents, white piping accents the interior here and there. The dashboard is also decorated with white/black fabric, which elevates the interior a bit. Little touches like that make something that could easily be incredibly dull come to life a little bit more. Just because it’s cheap, it doesn’t have to be dull.
The Dacia’s infotainment screen is large and responsive enough, but the real part of the party is the phone holder built into the side. The USB-A port is right below, so you can stick your phone front and center if you want. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto must be super handy… but they’re not. That’s one of the biggest problems I’ve found with the car during my time with it: While CarPlay will connect and start working via the cable, after five minutes it will disconnect. . After reconnecting and retrying, it repeats the same thing over and over. I bought a new iPhone cable to see if that would fix it, but it didn’t. The phone I’m using is only a few weeks old. You can still connect your phone via Bluetooth and listen to your favorite tunes that way, but that little mistake takes away from the shine of a simply charming cake.
Despite its low-cost ethos, the Sandero comes with a key card and one-button start. Once you’ve pressed the clutch and activated its fearsome 1.0-litre rampage, the cabin is filled with soft, uninteresting drumming. The gear lever has a rather long and pleasant throw, so the front slotting is easy. It takes a bit of encouragement to get started, as there isn’t much torque to play with, but once you’re on the move, as long as you keep the revs above 2,000, you’ll laugh. The car itself weighs 2,366 pounds, and once you’re up to speed, you can easily keep it there. The suspension is soft so potholes aren’t too much of a concern, which means you can happily zip through town without worrying about being dazzled. The brakes are strong enough to prevent even a pedestrian from stepping out into the middle of the road.
Taking it out on some more zigzag roads, little Dacia exudes fighting spirit. Its soft springs mean you can lean into corners with some good force. Although its steering isn’t as sharp, you’ll find yourself happily driving like a touring driver. Due to its very small power, you can pin the gas everywhere and go not very fast while beating quite loudly. You can stretch and the car without fear it will knock you into the grass at any moment. It’s a fun thing to sharpen, because to the casual observer, you’re barely honing at all. The 0 to 62 mph sprint takes 12.2 seconds and hits 109 mph, but it’s more about comfort than speed.
Going to the motorway, you’ll find things a bit noisy and the tiny engine struggling a bit to get to higher speeds, but that’s far from hopeless. You need to work with it a bit to get it up there as it is a city car not a cruiser. All told, it managed a decent 36.6 mpg during the time I used it, which isn’t bad when I primarily use it.
The special feature of Sandero is that it is not just a basic means of transportation. A way for young buyers, families and anyone else to get from A to B without getting wet if it rains. It has too much space in the trunk, plenty of room in the back for normal-sized people, the stereo isn’t bad (CarPlay aside), and its powertrain is enjoyable. Sandero is a no-frills hatch with a warm heart, and that’s the best news of all.
