A different logo, shop equipment and also what automakers call “brand philosophy”. If until now Romanian Dacia has rejected the usual game of creating its own image, now it has drawn a thick line behind the programmatic belittling of its importance. The new visual appearance of the brand is combined with noticeably better processing of the upcoming models and, of course, with higher prices.
The ad was never run here, but west of our borders it was once popular: a casual playboy is trying to impress a pretty girl in a bar, and he can’t think of anything cleverer than flashing a car standing on the road with a remote control. “My Porsche,” he says nonchalantly. The lady in question looks at him with worried interest: “Are you already being treated somewhere?”
Dacia filmed several sketches on the topic of status symbols, and all of them were funny. They were united by a tongue-in-cheek style of making fun of people who buy cars just to boost their egos. The ads are a perfect fit for Dacia – anyone who needs to prove something on the road has a hard time reaching out to a brand that makes the cheapest cars on the market.
A few years have passed since then and many things have changed. Dacia is no longer particularly cheap, prices start at just under 300,000 crowns. Now, moreover, he has started working on creating his own image, which until recently he deliberately minimized.
Blanka Solničková, responsible for the development of the dealer network, is in the Dacia showroom in Prague on Černokostelecká street, which has been modified according to the brand’s current standards. From the outside, the building is framed in khaki paneling, and all the car bodies displayed inside have the same hue. It is called “Green Dusty”, and whoever guessed that it is a symbol of ecology and nature, guessed right. There is a lot of green now in the Dacia, including widgets on the touch screen. “Everything you see around you comes from local producers in the Czech Republic. And everything is made from recycled materials, wood chips and ground tires,” explains Blanka Solničková.
In fact, there isn’t much to see in the showroom other than cars. A simple table made of glued wooden planks, a shelf with cardboard accessories, a sofa with a socket for recharging the phone. “It’s a way to have a nice showroom that doesn’t cost anything,” adds the head of dealerships.
From Dacia’s point of view, an environmentally friendly car is one that burns propane-butane instead of petrol and diesel. Eco-G models, as the automaker has called them, account for thirty percent of the brand’s total sales. Proof that the environment is now in vogue in the Dacia house is also the replacement of the chrome parts of the interior with more ecological accessories in gray.
From the point of view of nature, even the unacceptable chrome has disappeared from the bodywork. The model name in large letters on the boot lid is now in white, as is the interior design part of the main headlights. The whole thing looks unusual, but originality cannot be denied.
So the rustic and flashy decoration of the new Dacia has been damned, but the brand’s focus on economical solutions remains. “A driver doesn’t need three screens to drive when his smartphone can do the same for him,” says Libor Kavalec from the marketing department. “We used to be a budget brand, now we try to offer the best value for money,” he adds. In principle, both are not mutually exclusive, but a certain change can be seen in the green cars standing in the new Prague showroom. Slamming the door of the new Jogger is incredibly easy and accompanied by a pleasant rumbling sound. And the handle no longer pinches your finger: Dacia hasn’t always offered such a pleasant and complete experience.
The brand, originally targeted at former Eastern Bloc countries, eventually made a successful breakthrough in the West as well. In eighteen years it managed to produce 7.5 million cars, and in seven European countries it is among the top three best-selling cars among private customers.
However, it is the bet on private customers that has recently worried the head of the Czech representative office in Dacia, Zdeňk Grunt. “We’ve been recording a drop in orders since the summer, when people started receiving the first receipts with the new legislation on energy advances,” he says in no uncertain terms about the current market situation.
For those interested in a new car, the general survey has so far had a very pleasant effect: the new Dacia is no longer six months away, but only three. And from March next year it will even start to be produced for stock again, as was done in the days before the coronavirus.
