In a world of nominative determinism, the Dacia Bigster might be king. Four years ago Dacia set out to remake its model line-up, turning it from cheap and cheerful to affordable and desirable. Doing so meant making bigger cars was paramount.
So far in its life, Dacia has played in the so-called B-Segment. The segmentation of the European car market is arcane at best and sometimes can be as confusing as wading through a catalogue of taxonomy at the Natural History Museum, but the simple way to think of it is this – B-Segment is small cars and crossovers, such as the Ford Fiesta (RIP), the VW Polo, the Renault Captur, and the Toyota Yaris Cross.
This is where Dacia has been since the beginning. The Duster SUV, for all its practicality, is essentially size-wise a competitor (an in-house one at that) to the Renault Captur. The Jogger might have seven seats, but it’s riding on the same chassis as (and using the whole front structure of) the small Sandero hatchback. So for all its successes – the bestselling car in Europe last year, and not for the first time – Dacia has been only making small cars.
That changes here. The Bigster name might be cheesy, but it’s appropriate as it moves Dacia up into the C-Segment. This is Europe’s biggest car segment, and it runs the gamut from a VW Golf hatchback to a Nissan Qashqai or a Hyundai Tucson. This is where you’ll find so many of the big sellers on Irish and continental roads, and it’s where chunkier profit margins can also be mined.
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Especially if, like Dacia, you’re boxing clever. To create the Bigster, Dacia has stuck with the same CMF-B platform that underpins the smaller Duster and the even smaller Sandero, stretching it pretty much as far as it will go to create a boxy family-sized SUV that’s 4.6-metres long. Still compact, in broad terms, but big enough to be usefully bigger than the Duster. It won’t be drastically more expensive, either. Dacia Ireland is targeting – yet may not quite reach – a base price of just under €30,000.
You don’t immediately spot that extra size from the outside, as the Bigster takes the Duster’s styling and embiggens it. The same Y-shaped headlights, the same chunky, castellated bonnet.
The same square-edged wheel arches, trimmed with “starkle”, a recycled plastic that’s not painted and so which can protect the extremities of the Bigster from scrapes against off-road obstacles such as boulders and branches. Or, more realistically, stop you rubbing paint off against the wall of the Dunnes Stores car park.
When you sit inside, though, you immediately sense that the Bigster is a big step up for Dacia. Not just in size and space terms – that too – but also in a sense of greater quality and comfort. There’s a palpable sense that at least some of the materials used inside are of a higher grade than we’ve seen from Dacia of late, albeit not so high that you feel Dacia is getting notions.
Crucially, the driver’s seat and driving position feel far roomier and more comfortable than that of the Duster, which makes an excellent first impression. While there are plenty of cheap plastics, the steering wheel and the chunky toggle switch for the automatic gearbox feel good, and those are the bits you’ll end up touching most.
[ New Dacia Duster: Great value returns in a much prettier packageOpens in new window ]
The 10.1-inch touchscreen – standard on all models – is fairly blameless to use, and certainly simple, and certainly simplified by the fact that Dacia has borrowed some smart looking and feeling air conditioning buttons from Renault. You’ll get either a seven- or 10-inch driver’s digital display, depending on the model. There’s lots of useful storage in the centre console, and large door bins too.
In the back, there’s a terrific sense of space and airiness, again much more so than in the slightly tight rear confines of the Duster. The optional panoramic glass roof helps (maybe this is notions, for Dacia?) but better still are the comfy rear seats with an acreage of legroom and headroom. No one’s likely to complain about being relegated to the back of a Bigster.
Fewer still will complain about the boot. Behind the optional electric tailgate (definitely notions … ) there’s up to 702 litres of luggage space (up to the luggage cover) depending on the model. Even the hybrid model, with the need to stash its battery, has up to 612 litres, surely more than enough for anyone?
There’s no seven-seat option, though, but then there isn’t in any of the Bigster’s direct rivals either. The rear seats split-fold in three, and there’s up to 2,002 litres of cargo carrying capacity if you do that. There are vans with less. There’s also an optional armrest that turns into a backpack and a new phone app that can help you more efficiently pack your boot. Sort of Bigster Tetris …
What about driving, though? Well, you can choose from three-cylinder turbo 1.2-litre petrol and LPG engines with mild-hybrid assistance and up to 140hp, or a 130hp four-wheel drive version (which comes only with a manual gearbox). The bestseller is likely to be the 1.8-litre hybrid, which gets an upgrade compared to the similar engine used in the Jogger and Duster, bringing its power output to 155hp.
That’s the version we’ve driven, and it’s broadly impressive. It has the strange automatic hybrid gearbox common to all Renault and Dacia hybrids which has four physical gears, but which also has two electric motors (a 50hp motor and a chunky starter-generator) which kind of means that it has infinite gears.
However it works (and I’ve tried, I’ve tried to understand … ) it can be a bit odd to use, allowing the engine to occasionally drone on rather too much, but for the most part the Bigster is really pleasant to drive.
In hybrid form, you can tell that it has relatively soft suspension which has been beefed up slightly to cope with the hybrid’s extra weight, so while it is generally quite squishy and well-mannered, big transverse ridges or sharp speed bumps can send a “thwack” up through the wheels and springs.
That inherent softness means that the Bigster is no handling champ, and you definitely have to wait a beat for the nose to settle down on corner entry before really committing, but the feel-free steering is pleasingly weighted and fairly quick, and the Bigster has inherently good manners. Tight and twisty roads are not its forte, but on bigger, wider roads it’s a delight, if one that suffers from occasional bouts of wind (noise).
Fuel economy seems excellent on this experience – we averaged 5.3 litres per 100km – but the lower speed limits – and they’re rigorously enforced – of French country roads may have played a part in that, so let’s pass final judgment on that when we’ve driven at home on familiar territory.
So while the Bigster is well-named – it’s Dacia’s biggest model yet and a crucial climb upwards into more profitable territory – its bigness is not its defining characteristic. Its likeability is.
Cheap in all the areas you’d expect, but pleasing in all the areas that count, is the Bigster Dacia’s best car yet? Possibly …
