2023 Dacia Duster Journey | PH Fleet

Ben loves his Duster. So obviously he's selling it...

By Ben Lowden / Friday, 31 October 2025 / Loading comments

My dad bet me that I’d keep BP73 YWJ for less than a year. I really thought I’d prove him wrong, but it turns out he knows me better after all – it’s now up for sale. Dammit. Very much like when my previous long-term press car went back to Dacia; I loved the Duster for its value for money and Tonka toy looks, but ultimately, I didn’t want to give up having a performance car for a daily. No surprise then, that I’ve been feeling a bit like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Still, if I could afford to keep the Duster on the driveway, I absolutely would. It has saved me an absolute fortune on skip hire with all the tip runs I’ve done this year and has proven to be the perfect daily for Sunday Service and Cotswold B-road duties. Weighing in at just 1,263kg, the 150hp turbocharged 1.3-litre petrol engine pulls it along with ease, feeling nippier than the sub-10 second 0-62mph suggests.

Sure, it handles like a boat on wheels, but no one buys a Duster for its dynamism. Its soft suspension and squidgy tyres help it soak up the terrible road surfaces that proliferate where I live, and dare I say, it’s actually quite fun to hustle along. I’ve never run out of space, including a fully loaded family of four holiday to Devon. And it’s averaged 44mpg without driving with fuel economy in mind.

Needless to say, the biggest appeal of buying a Dacia is affordability, and that they cost peanuts to run. Struggling to fund two project cars at the time (this is going to go well again), the Duster made perfect sense as the cost-effective daily that I didn’t need to worry about going wrong, while I could focus more on my weekend toy. Definitely I’m not the only one with that mentality on PistonHeads.

There are few other nearly-new family cars that you could buy for £16k, with a further five years of warranty left if you continue to service it with Dacia. A minor service is £180 and a major is £235 at a main dealer – hardly crippling. So now you can see the conundrum I faced; on paper it made so much sense to keep the Duster, and if I could afford to keep it alongside two other cars, I really would. I’m hoping a good Samaritan on PH will buy it and keep it in good order for me to have back again in a few years’ time. Pretty please.

I must be careful not to offer genuine consumer advice, though if you’re looking for something nearly new at similar money with Tonka toy looks, then the Suzuki Vitara (preferably in SZ5 trim) is worth a look, with Suzuki following Toyota by extending their warranty up to 10 years if you continue to service the car with them. They’re smaller than the Duster, but equally as rugged and a bit more upmarket. Plus, you can get a four-wheel drive petrol, whereas Dacia frustratingly only made that available on the diesel-powered variants. Anyway, with Adam now transporting all our Sunday Service wares around, I no longer need something quite so big, so it’s time to go back to something fun again. More on that next time.

Car: 2023 Dacia Duster Journey TCe 150 Auto 4x2 EDC
Run by: Ben Lowden
On fleet since: December 2024
Mileage: 18,603