Dacia Duster 1.6 | Shed of the Week
The older it gets, the more sophisticated Dacia becomes - but it didn't start out that way...
Bargain basement motoring for all this week in the blobby shape of the Dacia Duster. This was the car that, for some unbelievers at least, put the dust into dustbin. Others loved its no-nonsense no-frills design, and its pricing. Today, a new one will cost you nearly £22,000, but they were just under £12k new in 2013 when this one was first registered. They were even less than that in 2017 when Dacia was practically giving away the last gen-one cars at £9,400 a pop.
Now they’re down to not much more than £1k, or in the specific case of this October 2013, pre-facelift, two-wheel drive, petrol-powered, entry-level Access in Appliance White, £95 more than £1k. The ad says it’s got climate control, a leather steering wheel and electric windows, features not usually associated with the Access. If that wheel did have leather on it, all Shed can say is that it’s worn off in a remarkably uniform way. The AC button must have fallen off at some point too, and although Shed can’t be certain with his eyesight it does look like the rear windows might be ‘keep fit’ ones. At least the Access’s famous radio hole has been filled, albeit with a head unit you’d probably sneer at in a £1 boot sale bucket.
We’re told that the timing belt on our shed was replaced at 91,000 miles when it was 10 years old. That was presumably during one of the three services it’s been grudgingly given in its 135,000 mile donkey life. Without specifying an engine, Dacia UK’s website says that their timing belts should be changed if a vehicle is more than 5 years old or it has done more than 70,000 miles. Assuming this car was still running OK when the belt was changed, you should have at least another 25,000 miles to go before the next one falls due, or a lot more than that if you’re a gambling skinflint keen on pursuing the scanty maintenance schedule followed so far.
In this day and age you can kind of understand folk turning a blind eye to maintenance requirements, but it can be a false economy. When a car that you’ve bought on the cheap decides it’s had enough of being ignored, the costs involved in putting issues right can seem disproportionately high. That’s despite most of the Duster’s bits being sourced from cobwebby old Renault parts bins. It’s labour charges that are the killer and they wait for no man.
Early 1.6 4x2 petrols like this had 103hp and 109lb ft, which should line you up for nearly 40mpg, a 0-62mph time of 11.5 seconds, a tax bill of £275pa and a top speed you don’t want to think about. No need to worry about the 4x2’s perceived lack of off-roading abillty though. If a car is light enough, and this one is at 1,160kg, it will get you around most manors just fine. Plus the gearing on 2WD Dusters is more relaxing on motorways than the low-ratioed AWD cars which didn’t have the benefit of a second set of gears.
The next MOT on our shed is due in September. Every advisory noted on every previous test has been a consumable and the last ticket was clean, but this time around there’s something Bisto-like in the region of the driver’s door bottom that will attract the tester’s attention. In the best of all worlds it will actually be gravy from a carelessly eaten pie.
More realistically however it will be the visible signs of underside corrosion, because very few of the Indian-built (pre-Romanian) ‘Rusters’ from this period have escaped it. The only other Duster featured in SOTW – another 2013 car but this time a 160,000-mile 4x4 diesel priced at £2k last October – had a handful of corrosion advisories on its last MOT from May ’25. That certificate expired last month and the car hasn’t been retested. Draw your own conclusions.
Thing is, if you get lucky with the September test on our £1,095 petrol Duster you could be all set for at least a year’s worth of very cheap motoring. Just follow Shed’s lead by going through life with low expectations. That way you’ll never be disappointed. Bung a £20 set of seat covers on it, rattlecan your steelies back to their original non-glory and revel in your proletarian stinginess. Either that or save up for the Duster/Jogger cross that PH poster E30KB suggested on the diesel Duster forum. As you can probably imagine it didn’t take the postmistress long to come up with a name for that.
Great commuter in London traffic, turned into a little van when needed, trips to the continent, drove all over the UK in it.
Comfortable for long drives and pretty nippy if you liked stirring the gear stick.
Bought new in 2021 for £10,500, sold in 2024 for £9,300.
If I end up buying a do it upper house, I'd seriously consider buying one again for tip and passenger duties.
I wonder how much less of a cost of living crisis people would be having if they went back to driving cars like this?
(This one feels like it might be a miss due to the lack of service history. Someone has really ignored this thing, feels like that may come back to bite. Surely other Dacia's are available that someone has serviced...)
I'd been meaning to try one for years as I actually quite like the whole ethos and think they look kinda cool.
I was so disappointed, we only had it for a day and it was much too long.
Still if you can drag it through another MOT that looks like decent value all the same. (But I'm out)
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff