Living with a… Dacia Jogger (Month 6)

Mileage: 4,117

This is the cheapest, best-value seven-seater family car on the market. Which makes it a winner before I’ve even driven it, in my eyes. When you have four boys, a dog and a hectic lifestyle there is zero point in buying the luxury seven-seat SUV we all dream of. Just consider the reality - the leather gets wrecked, the cream carpets muddy, the doors scuffed, the car boot lip scraped by dog paws. And those tinged with car envy don’t let you out of junctions. What you really want is something so insanely bargain-bucket that when the first child opens his door straight into the wall, you merely sigh. When the dog chews the seatbelt, you practically smile. And when people let you out of junctions because you’re just wallpaper to them, you positively smirk. For that reason, I give you our latest charabanc, the Dacia Jogger. Evidently a Jogger not a Sprinter, with its one-litre petrol engine rowed along via six manual gears (kids love a manual gearbox, by the way - endless fun sitting up front trying to find third). And you find yourself grateful for every creature comfort at this price point - we have wireless Apple CarPlay, heated seats, hill hold, air-con, USB ports, and clever roof bars that unscrew with an Allen key and can be turned 90 degrees to form sturdy roof bars to carry whatever can’t fit inside. Very clever. Indeed, we’re getting a top box this month and will be taking the Jogger from Kent to Cornwall, along with the rest of England. I’m also impressed by the interior which is nastily cheap - there’s smart black fabric on the seats which is tightly stitched, and flashes of a lighter mesh pattern to lighten things and add a bit of difference. So far, we’ve driven the Dacia around the M25, averaging about 54mpg for an acceptable trade-off for the modest power output of the engine. To be fair, it blasts merrily along with only a driver in the car, though we’ve yet to test it with seven of us on board. But, it goes to show, a tiny engine is no longer the hair shirt option it used to be. As Rory discovered in his video review the third row of seats are good and bad - they’re very easy to flip down but, crucially, don’t lie flat to create a load surface, so you’re left with the same sized usable boot space as when they’re up. Which is hardly anything - room for about four bags of shopping at best. The only answer is to remove the sixth and seventh seats completely if you want a decent boot, which is easy enough to do as they are very light. But you don’t want to be constantly removing seats or putting them in depending on what each individual trip is for. The dog, for one, is most put out. Back to top

Mileage: 5,881

We happily made it to Cornwall and back in the Jogger this month. Thanks to a Dacia top box fitted on those easy-to-use roof rails we managed to get all four boys and the dog in, plus bedding, clothes, towels and wetsuits in the narrow but deep boot space behind the third row. The paddleboard and beach ball had to go with the cousins in their car, but I still consider that a victory for the Jogger, especially as it returned 45mpg all the way down and back, fully loaded. We were also seriously impressed by the pull of the 1.0-litre engine. Sure, you have to drop down a gear on steep motorway inclines to maintain speed, but we never felt worryingly underpowered, and there was plenty of juice for overtaking. My cousin’s husband refused point blank to believe it has such a small engine. The leg space in all three rows is impressive. We had a tall 14-year-old teenager and a 12-year-old in the third row of seats, and both were very comfortable on the six-hour drive back to Kent. There was also plenty of storage space for all the boys and us up front. Indeed, we’re still finding discarded crisp packets, earphones, apple cores, books and drinks bottles in door pockets and under seats. There is a slightly concerning noise coming from the powertrain somewhere, which we’ve contacted Dacia about and wait to hear if they want to investigate. It’s a mechanical whirring, which happens with not much rhyme or reason, at all revs and both on and off the throttle. It’s getting worse, so we will report back. Back to top

Mileage: It’s a different car!

The eagle-eyed might have noticed a small difference in this month's report - the Jogger is now blue, not bronze. That's because it's a different Jogger. The reason for that is our previous one developed a strange mechanical whirring, which sounded like it was coming from somewhere in the drivetrain. Having studied English at university, and not keen on getting my jeans muddy looking under the car, that was about as far as my fault diagnosis went, so I did what I always do in these situations. And called Charlie, the ever-obliging Dacia PR. This was somewhat embarrassing, given we have previous here when he came to my rescue after a night at the theatre and my realisation in a cold and deserted station car park that the key to the Duster test car I was standing in front of with my eight-year-old son was not in my bag but in fact under seat J14 in the dress circle at the Lyceum. By a twist of fate Charlie was actually up and about at this late hour on a mission to buy ice cream for his pregnant wife and was happy (he said at the time) to help out. Anyway, long story short, Charlie thinks I'm an idiot, which is fair enough. A suspicion now confirmed by his mechanics, who can't find anything wrong with my previous Jogger, despite more than 100 test miles to determine the noise and its cause. But I know it was making an odd sound, because my partner thought so too. And although I may be an idiot who loses car keys on a night out at the theatre I have been doing this job 20 years now and know a funny, and potentially alarming, noise when I hear one. They think it might have been a lose part of the roof bars. The mystery remains. So, in the meantime we have the blue Jogger in Comfort trim, instead of previous Extreme trim. This is just for a couple of weeks before another like-for-like bronze car arrives to carry on the six-month loan. All up to speed? The blue Jogger is just as lovely as the bronze Jogger, and I've just discovered the Eco button, which dims the engine to squeeze yet more drops from the fuel tank. A very welcome development now we are approaching economic Armageddon. My partner laughed and said, acerbically, "How do you dim the power of a one-litre engine?" Then he pushed the button and realised everything was still serviceable, even fully laden and uphill. Only now we're getting near-on 50mpg, so he has stopped sneering. And when you cancel Eco mode, you feel like you're in a Sprinter, not a Jogger. But that's a Mercedes van, so we'll stick with the Jogger. Back to top

We took the Dacia from Kent to north Yorkshire this month for a mini break, without the kids. Whoop!
Removing the third-row seats to create a properly big boot is a faff - they're fairly easy to get in and out but pretty unwieldly in size, and you've then got to find somewhere to store them while you're out and about. If Dacia had designed the Jogger with third-row seats that fold flat it would have made quite a difference. True, you'd still have a big step up from the boot floor to the folded seat backs, but at least you could lie stuff on top of them. As it is, the entire space is unusable, with the seat backs sloping at a steep angle when folded. However, you simply cannot complain about this car as a whole. Four months in, we are still marvelling at the performance of this one-litre engine in a seven-seat car. It doesn't know when to give up - it just keeps on pulling and working its socks off, without ever seeming stressed. We drove 350 miles in each direction with no niggles or frustrations at all. The most you might be forced to concede is the dropping of a gear on motorway inclines if you want to overtake something, but even that isn’t as big a faff as it sounds. We really are a far cry from the days of small engines like this signalling a rubbish driving experience. The only downside to the long trek north and then south is the Jogger's seats. They are one example of cost-cutting in any otherwise excellent, value-for-money car. There is no discernible lumbar support or ergonomic integrity, just a very basic seat. My partner has all sorts of back problems and he was grumbling when we arrived at our destination. I'll concede that they aren't very comfy. But I won't hear another bad word said against this remarkable family charabanc. Back to top

My youngest son has the dubious distinction of having damaged the most expensive and least expensive press cars I’ve ever brought home to test. The most expensive was a Rolls-Royce Phantom Black Badge. He was playing around with the heavy glass stopper from the crystal decanter in the back of the car (what’s that, you don’t have one in your car?) and dropped it onto one of the crystal cut glass tumblers, smashing the stopper and the tumbler, while I screeched to a halt and started doing the maths.
The least expensive is our poor Jogger. We were late for school one morning last week, I was also late for a work flight, and he couldn’t reach the open tailgate to shut it. While I was yelling at him to leave it, in his wisdom he decided to yank it down by hanging off the left boot strut that keeps the tailgate propped open. The strut duly bent with the weight of a nine-year old swinging off it (who could have guessed?) and came away from its mooring. To this day, my son swears it happened of its own accord. And for the avoidance of doubt that's my elder son in the picture - he wanted me to point that out, given his brother was too embarrassed to pose with the damage. I’ve been apologising to the lovely Dacia team non-stop since because I also returned the first Jogger they sent me as it was making a weird noise which they couldn’t locate, and I lost the key to the Duster I had before that, per the sorry tale I shared previously. As I type this, Dacia is likely putting a red flag and the words “Do not send cars” by my name on the database. We have four weeks left with the Jogger and are trying to rejig the calendar so that any family trips involving all of us take place before it goes back. After that, we have no seven-seater so it’s back to two-car trips every time. And not going anywhere where the entrance fee is per car, not person. I’ll say this about the Jogger as well - it’s the only car which has Apple CarPlay that has never glitched or gone wrong. The simple, friendly and colourful infotainment system is easy to use, fun to look at and reliable. Which sums up this car. We’re still getting high 40s miles per gallon, and that sweet 1.0-litre engine is still pulling us everywhere with no complaint. It’s going to be tough to let this car go. Back to top

Our last month with the Jogger has been spent in snowy and icy conditions, and it's performed well. We got snowed in good and proper for 48 hours as we live on a steep hill in Kent, so didn't in fact use the Jogger for a week given it sat on our drive under a foot of snow. When we finally came to clear it and fire the poor thing up it was with fingers crossed, as we needed it to get seven of us to a pre-Christmas family outing. Thankfully it turned over first time and the demister cleared the last residues of frost and ice from the windows in a jiffy.
My mother, two sons, two step-sons and partner piled in and we set off across the still frozen countryside to an evening of carols by candlelight. The two oldest boys (aged 15 and 13) actually sat in the third row, proving the Jogger is a viable seven-seater for full-sized people and not just kids. They were entirely comfortable, with room for their ever-growing legs and gigantic feet. The lanes were covered with slush and shrouded by freezing fog, but the Jogger was fantastic. Its little 1.0-litre petrol engine pulled all seven of us with no issues and, apart from one dodgy patch of sheet ice where we slid sideways for a few heart-stopping metres, the Jogger trundled merrily along, its front wheels gripping and turning with no bother. And that sums up the Jogger, really. It's a no-fuss, no-bother family driving solution for those after the best possible value for money. In early 2023, we'll be testing the Jogger Hybrid with 140 horsepower, and that's bound to be a good 'un too. We are really going to miss being without a car capable of carrying our big family. And we're very much looking forward to the next model to come from the Dacia stable - this is a car brand that totally does what it says on the tin. Back to top