Price: £8,714
Top speed: 104mph
0-62mph: 11.1 seconds
MPG: 55.3
CO2: 115g/km
Do you have a pet name for your car? Apparently half of us do and, according to Webuyanycar.com, the most popular this year are Swifty and Unicorn for girl cars, and Kermit and Bruno for masculine ones. A decade ago Britney and Harry topped the list. This means that half of us have also made a binary assumption about the sex of our cars. Gender fluidity has yet to arrive in the motoring industry? It made me wistful for the days when I still used to give my cars names. I can own up to The Shark and Fitzy, two lovable but useless sets of wheels. Is it because we only give names to our crappiest cars and that by personalising them we can ultimately be more forgiving of their faults? Just a theory…
This week I’d definitely be tempted to give my car a name. It’s the Stepway Sandero from Dacia and it’s both crappy and unexpectedly lovable. Dacia is a Romanian company bought by Renault as a diffusion line. The models feature switchgear and components from phased-out Renaults, so they might feel familiar if when you sit at the wheel if you used to own a Clio years ago. When the Sandero was first launched it was billed as the definitive no-frills, budget deal, and it soon found a loyal and growing following. For drivers who prioritise value and who don’t want secondhand, the Dacia had their name all over it. But now they face a dilemma – the (marginally) more expensive Stepway has arrived.
The Stepway is the rugged version of the ordinary Sandero. It’s only front-wheel drive so isn’t an off-roader in any real sense, in fact, in any sense, but the raised ride height, roof rails and plastic cladding around the arches and bumpers, gives it a whiff of the SUV. There are two engine choices: a 900cc 3-cylinder petrol and a 1.5-litre diesel. Both deliver 89bhp and are paired to a five-speed gearbox. I tested the petrol unit and it was surprisingly perky. There is no point in clambering into a cheap car and pointing out it doesn’t handle as well as an expensive one: the price is the raison d’être. So, yes, the metal doors do feel flimsy, the plastic does feel brittle and the ride is not smooth.
But put your “Dacia specs” on and you start to see a car that is remarkable in terms of what is offered. It’s reliable and safe. It’s a useful car that’s pleasant to drive. It comes with Bluetooth as well as USB connections. Pay a little more and you get a touchscreen satnav system. Everything is bog standard, but there’s an honest pleasure to driving it. It feels like a car from the 80s. Unlike Stella Artois which is “reassuringly expensive”, the Stepway is “alluringly cheap”.
And, BTW, it finished 54th out of 200 cars in Auto Express’s latest driver satisfaction survey.
What did I name her? I thought Stella the Stepway was nice…
Email Martin at martin.love@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @MartinLove166
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