Practical Compact SUVs with Manual Gearbox: Dacia Duster and SsangYong Korando

The offer of practical compact SUVs with all-wheel drive is quite rich. However, it is mostly associated with automatic transmissions and therefore more expensive. You won’t find many with a manual gearbox. The cheapest are Dacia Duster and SsangYong Korando.

Although some environmentalists don’t like it, the best-selling segment among passenger cars is currently that of compact SUVs. And Dacia Duster or SsangYong Korando achieve great results in this packed group. They score particularly well with a favorable price and appeal to many customers with simple technology without electric auxiliary power units or unnecessarily large digitization. You can also have them with all-wheel drive without an automatic transmission, which is also not seen much anymore. Therefore, it is not even surprising that even after the first four months of this year, Dacia Duster remains in the top five best-selling compact SUVs, and Korando (the SsangYong brand entered the SDA statistics only in 2022) occupies a beautiful seventh place.

It won’t dazzle, it won’t offend

We have been seeing both cars on Czech roads for some time now. The second generation of the successful duster was introduced in 2017 and was gradually improved by Dacia. The main change took place last year, when the Romanian brand completely changed its identity, including the logo. The traditional, easily recognizable silhouette with raised fender edges was thus complemented by a new radiator grille with a modern emblem inspired by the letters DC. The same logo can also be found on the wheels and the Dacia lettering has appeared on the trunk lid at the back. What we like about the duster is that it looks solid and doesn’t play around with anything. On the other hand, it is not a handsome man who magnetizes the surroundings. Even the fifth generation Korand, which arrived in 2019, is not one of the hot guys. In our opinion, the pursuit of the originality of some parts or details is questionable. We can at least praise the balanced proportions of the more angular body. You will find a whole range of more distinctive and beautiful competitors among compact SUVs. Even so, we are happy with the expression koranda, because in the past the designers of the SsangYong brand had no taste at all.