DACIA are calling their spacious new Logan a Maximum Capacity Vehicle (MCV). As you know MPVs are very popular, but this is not an MPV, but a station wagon type car with huge boot space.
Dacia has sold more than 1,100 cars since they entered the Irish market over 12 months ago. The Romanian company, which is owned by Renault, achieved those impressive figures with the Duster and Sandero. Now they have added two more cars, the Sandero Stepway and the Logan to their Irish fleet.
There is no secret about what the Dacia brand has to offer. Their marketing slogan is that their cars are
‘shockingly affordable.’ And that’s just it, you won’t get any luxuries, indeed the inside of the Logan is very spartan looking, but the cars drives well and you can buy a 1.2 petrol version of the Logan for only
?¬11,190. Now you won’t get many station wagons in Ireland for that kind of money. The frugal 1.5 diesel version I drove, starts at
?¬13,690.
Externally the car looks attractive and it’s very long. Two roof rails add to the elongated look. Inside it reminded me of a car from behind the old Iron curtain. My daughter was impressed that they had included a vanity mirror for the front seat passenger and the radio is fine with slave controls at the side of the steering wheel, but
‘bare’ is the one word that I would use to describe the dashboard.
In the back there is ample leg and head room for three adults and from a driver’s point of view when you glance backwards the inside looking really long.
I found that I had to give the driver’s door a good slam for it to close properly and was shocked to find that you needed a key to open the boot. To be fair there is a lever to open the boot in the cabin, but if you are approaching the car and your hands are full of shopping or carrying a bag of spuds, there is no zapper supplied to open the boot automatically for you.
When you do open the boot you will find that it’s massive; the official figure is 573 litres and if you leave down the rear seats you get 1,518 litres. There was plenty of room left for a spare wheel, but you don’t get one and have to make do with a repair kit. Other car companies realise that Irish people really appreciate a spare wheel, even a
‘mini’ one, but Dacia obviously didn’t check that out in their market research.
It’s often said that in life you get what you pay for, that’s certainly true with the Logan. You won’t set any land speed records as you got from zero to 100km/h, but there are plenty of more expensive cars out there if that’s what you want from your driving experience.
Naturally you will be thinking to yourself, how much will I get for my Logan when I want to change cars in a few years time. You might have to stick with the Dacia brand, but the good news is that they have plenty new models coming our way. For more information log on to www.dacia.ie