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They say that a crisis arises an opportunity. Beyond the optimistic messages that the Marketing team of Mr. Wonderful would sign, it is true that we are all good to stop for a moment and know what we are doing with our life and what direction we want to take in the future.

Dacia is at that point. Threatened in the low range By cars of a thousand screens, higher ranges materials and a quality perception above what has been expected, the company has been trying to try reposition your product. This Dacia Bigster is probably his most ambitious proposal in recent years.

Here we have tried it in hybrid format.

DACIA BIGSTER TECHNICAL SHEET

How to get out of an existential crisis

Good for Union Europe regulations Or because of the arrival of Chinese manufacturers who are putting cars at very affordable prices, Dacia has been launching the message that they cannot remain in the niche market in which they so far lived.

Your cars They are not the cheapest. And, they assure, They cannot be. To convince it only remains to be the leaders for the price to be the leaders in the quality/price ratio. That is, try to give more than anyone for the minimum possible price. The big problem is that Chinese manufacturers seem to have understood that this must also be their message.

Who goes to an Omoda or Jaecoo dealership will meet medium -sized SUV with interiors that surprise their padded, for their huge screens and adjustments that, first, give good impression. In general, the perceived quality is very good For the price they have.

None of this you will find in a Dacia car. But you will find many other things that are more important than a thousand screens. A better dynamic and, above all, an engine (in this hybrid case) that yields especially well and that predisposes us to think that we can save a lot of money in the long term.

A hybrid that fights artifice games

Because, indeed, when you feel at Dacia Bigster you check that you don’t have the Little luxuries They are offering Chinese manufacturers. The central console, the dashboard, the doors … everything is covered with hard plastics that, yes, are well adjusted.

The proposal is clear. Dacia tries to offer cheaper materials but that should endure the passage of time. And, sometimes, a hard resistant plastic is better than better apparent quality materials that can suffer worse the passage of time. Of course, if we talk about Chinese brands we cannot advance this or for good or for worse because, simply, they do not have been between us so much time. Here, time will opt for the balance.

To improve that quality perception, Dacia does raise the level with a steering wheel that feels firm and slightly padded. In addition, he flees from any game that can give him problems and opt for physical buttons that simply seem to me a more accurate decision than any type of touch panel, carry this or not haptic response.

The two screens game is compliant. The instrument picture reads very well and offer three configurable spaces. The information is well distributed, read to the first view and there are numerous interchangeable data in the extreme right to have everything under control.

The central screen is 10.1 inches. A correct size. It is not big but either is small to navigate the menus. The disposition is what we would see in a Renault, built on Android Automotive So it is fast and easy to find any option sought.

The browsing drinks, therefore, from Google Maps. A browser that takes time to refresh the information more than it should. Sometimes you can doubt and whether we are taking the right out of the roundabout if we are a little clueless. It seems curious to me, however, because navigation between the menus of the infotainment system is agile and has not given us any problem by changing between functions.

Of course, the rear camera screen has very low resolution and help little when maneuvering. It is no accident. From Dacia herself they already launched the message that this and the rest of ADAS AID TO DRIVING That they must mount by obligation of the European Union is exactly because they are an obligation.

In motion, the Adaptive Cruise Control I sin sometimes braking applying too much force. On the contrary, acceleration is softer and does not present those problems. The maintenance in the lane works, in general, well. If you are looking for the tickles, it can have a problem (a curve at a relatively high speed on a secondary road) but it is not where it is assumed that this function will be used.

We arrive, now, at the best of the car. It seems dynamically that it is slightly below a Dacia Duster and that the excess of size and weight penalizes you a bit when maintaining a path. The address feels a bit soft and I think it would be better to be a bit more direct. Problems that are more evident on secondary roads but have no influence on highway or highway.

Of course, their general behavior is better than other Chinese proposals such as Jaecoo 7 or its Spanish version, the Ebro S700. In these two cases the cars feel softer, from the suspensions to the direction, through a brake touch that is also worse in these cases.

Dacia Bigster shows A much more settled carof higher rolling quality. Redundant perceptions with its 155 hp hybrid engine.

Here, something similar happens. The impression is that this hybrid block works a little better in the Dacia Duster that gains in acceleration due to its size more content. The bigster seems a bit slower in a first start but already thrown flows at good speed. Always maintaining, yes, a mattress of power in your pocket that would make it easier to leave with solvency of any situation. The gearbox, in addition, is pleasant and not very intrusive.

The propeller is more refined than that of Chinese models. Accelerates before, with more momentum and is less noisy. But, in addition, it offers an extra huge savings. The car is approved a WLTP consumption of 4.6-4.7 liters/100 km but in our route, where secondary roads have been prioritized rolling at traffic speed or within the legal limits we have stayed in consumption of between 4.8 and 5.1 l/100 km.

It is this, without any doubt, his best asset. Right now, a European family who wants a car with a good size and looking for a car between 25,000 and 30,000 eurosIt has two paths to take. Giving the Chinese car a chance is to make sure that you are opting for a vehicle with a higher interior quality perception and that, without a doubt, is more colorful.

The other option is to decide for a car like this Dacia Bigster. The space in the rear seats is very wide and its trunk (up to 702 liters from its ground to the ceiling) also grants a lot of peace of mind to those who need to load with a lot of luggage, transport large objects such as a bicycle or, simply, they consider sleeping inside the car. A the latter option, to aim at the hiker or adventurer market, in which Dacia is lately emphasizing.

But, above all, you can make sure you have a comfortable car for the day to day that you can deliver really low consumption. In the end, saving between a liter and a half or two liters per 100 kilometers can be a lot of money at the end of the year. Specifically, who performs 15,000 kilometers a year is saving between 220 and 300 liters of fuel per year. With gasoline at 1.60 euros/liter, we talk about A good savings between 350 and 480 euros a year that can be key when decanting the balance.

In short, Dacia offers Bigster a less colorful car inside (on the outside, the image is powerful) but with a rolling quality and savings in fuel consumption remarkably better than that of its Chinese rivals.

Photos | Xataka

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