Jogger delivers a flexible, no frills drive

By Jack McKeown

August 17 2022, 5:00 pm

Need a seven-seat SUV but don’t want to spend upwards of £30,000? Then Dacia has you covered.

The Dacia Jogger is a new seven-seat SUV with a price tag starting at just £15,800. To put it into context, that’s cheaper than an entry level Ford Fiesta and less than half of what most seven-seat SUVs cost.

So is it a hunk of junk? Absolutely not. It may have a funny name but apart from that it’s a thoroughly good car. My Jogger came in a natty shade of burnt orange. With a chunky shape and tough plastic wheel arches it has a rugged, capable appearance.

Well-equipped with a premium feel

Remarkably, given that it has seven seats, it shares the same platform as the Renault Clio. At 4.55 metres in length it’s slightly longer than a Honda Civic.

As mentioned, prices start at less than £16,000. I drove a higher spec Extreme SE model, which was very well equipped. Keyless entry, heated front seats, an eight-inch touchscreen, and lots of chrome trim gave the car a premium feel – yet its price tag was just £18,745.

Power comes from a three-cylinder turbocharged 1.0 litre petrol engine that produces 109bhp. That doesn’t sounds like a lot to haul a seven-seat vehicle around, and a 0-62mph time north of 11 seconds isn’t going to set the heather alight either.

Yet it feels nippier than those numbers suggest. I didn’t get the chance to drive it with seven occupants, but with three of us in the car it still zipped away from traffic lights and got up to speed without feeling at all sluggish.

Hybrid model due to join the line-up

Economy is excellent, too. According to official figures it should get close to 50mpg. In a week of real-world driving I averaged 44mpg, which is very good indeed.

At present the 1.0 litre unit is the only engine in the range but a hybrid model with more power should be joining the line up next year.

There’s plenty of room inside. Front and rear passengers both enjoy lots of head and legroom. Foldaway picnic tables in the second row are ideal for snacking or propping up tablets on long tourneys.

Tall adults won’t love the rearmost seats but they’re ideal for children or smaller adults. In fact, there’s more room than in some much more expensive seven seaters such as the Skoda Kodiaq and Land Rover Discovery Sport.

With all seven seats in place there’s a modest 212 litres of boot space – around the same as you get in a city car.

Fold up seats six and seven and there’s a vast 699 litres. The rearmost seats can even be removed altogether to create an even more cavernous cargo space.

At just 10kg per seat they’re not heavy either.

There’s plenty of storage for smaller items in the deep internal door bins and centre console, too.

So what’s the Dacia Jogger like to drive? More than pleasant enough for most people to be happy with, I’d say.

Up to the task of long distance drives

The suspension is soft and comfortable. On a trip to a nature reserve it handled the pitted, bumpy road very capably.

Take it up to 70mph and it isn’t as refined as a Mazda CX-5 or Nissan X-Trail, but for such a bargain price you can’t expect it to be.

However, it’s at least 80% as good for 50% of the cost. I took it down the east coast to Portobello and back and can confirm it’s more than up to the task of long daily drives.

I was really quite smitten with the Dacia Jogger. We live in a world where inflation is at 10%, energy prices are spiralling and everything feels like it’s getting more expensive.

To find a car that’s this capable at this price point is nothing short of amazing.