The All-New Dacia Duster: The Budget Car That’s Suddenly Too Good for the Jokes

Right, let’s get one thing straight. Dacia. The name alone used to conjure up images of a car built entirely from recycled lunchboxes, driven by people who genuinely thought a satellite navigation system was some kind of elaborate bird feeder. It was the perpetual punchline of the car world. James May made a career out of mentioning the Sandero.
But now, we have the new Duster. And I have to report that this latest iteration is like finding out your slightly dim, perpetually broke cousin just won the lottery and bought a tasteful but aggressive-looking new jacket. It’s confusing. It’s still cheap, but it’s no longer shameful. In fact, for a cynic who appreciates things that simply work without weeping electronics, this thing is dangerously competent.

Chapter 1: The Exterior (or, The Decathlon Aesthetic)

The old Duster looked like a Labrador puppy that hadn’t quite grown into its paws. This new one? It looks like a steroid-enhanced bulldog sculpted by a teenager playing too much Cyberpunk. It’s covered in plastic cladding that Dacia proudly calls Starkle®, a speckled, recycled composite.

They say this Starkle is “scratch-resistant” and hides scuffs because the colour goes all the way through. This is Dacia’s way of saying: “Look, we know you’re going to drag this thing through a quarry, and we can’t afford fancy paint, so we gave you the equivalent of granite-tough camouflage.” It’s brilliant. It’s the automotive equivalent of a plastic watch you buy from a sporting goods shop—you know it cost €40, but it will still tell the time when your Swiss chronometer is crying in a repair shop.

And 217 mm of ground clearance? That’s not a family SUV; that’s a small tank. It’s got better approach angles than a nervous teenager trying to ask someone to prom. This Duster isn’t just ready for the urban jungle, it’s ready for the actual jungle, provided the jungle doesn’t mind listening to an exaggerated amount of road noise.

Chapter 2: The Engine (or, The Sound of Adequate Effort)

For the first time, you can have a Duster that doesn’t run purely on hope and the collective grief of other drivers. It’s available as a hybrid. A full hybrid. They boast it lets you drive electric 80% of the time in the city.

This sounds fantastic until you put your foot down on the motorway. That’s when the 1.6-litre engine reminds you it’s working overtime to power both the wheels and the electric motors, resulting in a sound that can only be described as a frantic washing machine trying to wring out a duvet. The sound deadening is still clearly optional (or non-existent), amplifying the engine’s plea for mercy throughout the hard-plastic cabin.

Then there is the base model’s bi-fuel ECO-G 100. It runs on petrol and LPG. It’s cheap, sensible, and capable of reaching 62 mph in around 14 seconds. That’s not a 0-60 time; that’s a geological event. But hey, it’s honest. If your only performance metric is “Can I drive 1,300 km on one fill-up?”, the Duster is your champion.

Chapter 3: The Interior and The Great Nanny State War

Now, we move inside, to the place where Dacia truly performs a service to cynical drivers everywhere.

Yes, the plastic is harder than a year-old sourdough loaf. You tap the dashboard, and it rings back with a hollow, almost mocking sound. But who cares? It’s wipe-clean. It’s ready for the mud, the dog hair, and the sticky residue of a thousand drive-thru coffees. It’s durable, not luxurious.

But the real victory is in the cockpit. Dacia, in a shocking act of defiance against the rest of the industry, has kept physical buttons for the climate control. A massive win! They give you the 10-inch screen for the media system (which is fast enough, unless you try to do anything too demanding, suggesting the processor was rescued from a 2012 desktop tower), but when you want heat, you turn a knob. Bless them.

Now for the bad news. The car has to comply with all the new EU Nanny State rules. It comes equipped with:

1. Lane Keep Assist that tugs at the wheel like an overzealous co-pilot.
2. Intelligent Speed Assist that bongs at you louder than a church bell every time you dare to exceed the speed limit by 1 km/h.

And here is the punchline: Like every other modern car, you have to turn them off every single time you start the car. Fortunately, Dacia, in a moment of pure empathy, gave us a dedicated ‘My Safety Button’ to quickly execute the two-jab sequence required to silence the digital back-seat driver.

This is the new Duster user experience: Get in, start the car, mutter a dramatic curse at the dashboard, double-jab the button to turn off the surveillance, and then enjoy your remarkably capable, cheap, and chunky off-roader.

Conclusion

The new Dacia Duster has stopped being a joke. It has become a statement. It is a competent, honest-to-goodness SUV that gives you everything you need and nothing you don’t (except for the irritating safety bongs).

It’s still built on a budget, but they haven’t tried to hide it, they’ve weaponized it. They took the cheap plastics, gave them a cool name, and told us they’re “adventure-ready.” They kept the physical buttons because they know people who buy Dacias are sensible, simple souls who just want a car.

If you’re looking for a comfortable drive that rivals a Mercedes, look elsewhere. If you’re looking for a vehicle that looks vaguely military, can cross a muddy field, and costs less than a slightly used family hatchback, the Duster is the winner.

It’s the car that shouts, “I’m a sensible adult who knows how to budget, but I might also be carrying a shovel and three weeks’ worth of canned beans.”

Go buy one. You won’t regret the car. You’ll just regret how much time you spend silencing the digital nanny.

Dacia Duster
Fuel: 140 hp full hybrid, a 130 hp mild hybrid, and a 100 hp bi-fuel (petrol/LPG) engine
Power:  bi-fuel (petrol/LPG) engine
Model: 2025