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Budget car manufacturer Dacia’s latest model the Jogger has been earning praise from reviewers for a no-nonsense approach that features all the basics, while its seven seats will fit a large family with space to spare. But last week it earned just a single-star rating out of five from crash test body Euro NCAP prompting fears safety might not be a priority.
The Romanian brand’s newest vehicle was marked down for not having a seatbelt reminder function in its third row.
However Dacia themselves have vowed that their approach is the correct one and that buyers would rather pay less than have more hi-tech safety features.
The firm’s vice-president of product performance, Lionel Jaillet, said that the NCAP score was a direct result of conscious decisions made by Dacia.
He said: “In the seven-seat variant we wanted the third row of seats to be removable, and we intentionally did not put a seatbelt reminder on those seats, because when you extract them then you need to disconnect and subsequently reconnect electronics.”
He added: “It becomes expensive. We are losing a few percent on the score but as this is the box that defines the overall rating, it is one star; if the five-seat Jogger [not offered in the UK] had its own rating, it would be the same as the Sandero Stepway, which gets two stars.”
The Jogger, which shares a platform with the Sandero, also lacks suitable electronic safety assistance features.
But Marc Suss, Dacia’s vice president of engineering, said: “This is not what we call essential.
“We made the choice to keep it simple for our customers. Each time we are putting a new car on the market, it is the safest Dacia ever.”
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He continued: “It is far safer than the Logan and other cars. Even compared to most of the cars in the market, we are providing cars with a level of safety features that are far above.”
The Jogger starts at £15,345 making it one of the cheapest new cars on sale in the UK.
Mr Jaillet said: “Currently, the customer’s requests are evolving. They are joining the Dacia mindset of going to the essentials.
“They want more simplicity and frugality.”
He added: “But we are not chasing Euro NCAP stars when they are related to electronic aids.
“Many of our customers are not willing to pay for that, and they are not understanding how to use them anyway.”
Matthew Avery, Thatcham Research’s chief research strategy officer said: “For a family car, this safety performance is disappointing. The vehicle may be more affordable than others in the same category, but in terms of safety, it appears that you do get what you pay for.
“In this case, not only is the Dacia Jogger lacking the active safety features that buyers expect as standard, but even some of its basic passive safety features aren’t up to the industry standard set by the vast majority of car makers.”
While the Jogger has a cheap starting price it can be optioned up to a price of over £18,000 for the top trim.
The Extreme SE TCe 110 spec comes with cruise control, heated front seats and built in sat-nav.
The engine is a one litre, three cylinder with a six speed manual gearbox.
Dacia claims a fuel consumption from the unit of around 49.7mpg.
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