I know that our antipathy towards SUVs is well known, and I would argue that it is well-founded. I will happily hurl from the ditch towards anyone who buys an SUV when they don’t actually need it.
However, we are willing to suspend our ire when a car demonstrates overall goodness and fitness for purpose. Which is why we’ve fallen hook, line, and sinker for the Dacia Bigster.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be opening with the conclusion, but the fact is that given its size, price, space, performance and styling, this might just be the best all-round car you can buy in Ireland right now.
[ Dacia Bigster may have a cheesy name but it could be the brand’s grand fromageOpens in new window ]
Yes, I said styling. If you’re going to buy an SUV, why bother buying one that’s all apologetic and hatchback-adjacent in its looks? The Bigster is chunky, boxy and proud of it. Few cars this side of a Volvo 245 GL are as rectilinear as this, and that pays dividends in both visibility and practicality.
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Visibility, because those castellations on the bonnet – the squared-off outer edges that pay obvious homage to the original Range Rover, a car to which this Bigster is surprisingly close in terms of size – mean that you can essentially see the outer edges of the car from the driver’s seat. That is really helpful when manoeuvring in a tight space. Practicality because … well, because practicality is this car’s raison d’être.
Quite apart from the fact that Dacia, increasingly, wants to be considered a sort of European answer to Jeep (albeit without Jeep’s wannabe-premium pricing), it also wants to create cars that are as practical as they can be for the money. Which is why the Dacia Bigster has only five seats.
Wouldn’t it be more practical with seven seats? Well, there certainly seems to be room enough in the massive boot – all 612 litres of it, and you can stretch that to 677 litres if you bin the hybrid engine in favour of the basic 140hp 1.2 turbo.
But there’s a kicker. According to Dacia boss Denis Le Vot (and why he wasn’t recently promoted to be the head of the entire Renault group is something of a mystery), Dacia could have made the Bigster a seven-seater, but that would have meant a wholesale re-engineering of the back end of the car, from the axle upwards, which would have been expensive, and expensive is not the Dacia way.
Besides, seven-seaters only account for around 25 per cent of the total family SUV market, so Dacia was happy taking on the other 75 per cent.
Anyway, the Bigster is perfectly practical for four people, even big people, and there’s just about enough space in the middle of the rear seat for one more, although it’s a shame for families that there are only Isofix anchors for the outer two rear seats, and not for the front passenger seat.
The cabin is most definitely built down to a price, as is that of the closely related Duster. The plastics are mostly cheap, except for the bits you touch all the time, like the steering wheel and the stubby, rubberised automatic gear selector.
That’s fine though, as the Bigster’s extra space, compared to the Duster, gives it a sense of luxury that the smaller car could never hope to match.
It also means that the driving position is far more comfortable, and Dacia has attempted to liven up the cabin with some nice seat fabrics, and some pleasant textures for the cheaper panels. It is, in the Dacia idiom, pretty basic, but basically successful.
The hybrid engine is a new one, which is shared with Renault, but Dacia gets the first bite at this particular cherry. It’s a 1.8-litre unit, compared to the 1.6-litre hybrid currently in the Duster, which means a boost in power to 155hp and some seriously good fuel economy.
[ New Dacia Duster: Great value returns in a much prettier packageOpens in new window ]
For a big car like this to average 5.6-litres per 100km in our hands over the course of a week is really good – for comparison’s sake, a similarly sized Kia Sportage hybrid struggled to beat 7.0-litres per 100km.
Much of that is down to the Bigster’s weight. Although it looks imposing, actually the Bigster isn’t as big as its name suggests – at 4.5 metres long, it’s about halfway between a Golf and a Tiguan – and it’s certainly not heavy. The 1,487kg kerb weight of this hybrid, the porkiest model in the line-up, is lighter than more than a few mid-size hatchbacks.
Power is adequate, although you’d never describe it as sparkling, and the complex four-speed-plus-two-electric-motors gearbox can be obstructive at times, but for the most part the Bigster just rolls along without complaint.
It’s a comfortable cruiser, although the tyres kick up lots of noise if the road surface is less than perfect. Around town, the ride becomes rather fidgety and lumpy, but it’s much smoother at higher speeds.
Handling? Well, it has some. The steering is quite accurate, and has surprisingly good weight, but there’s a sense of soft looseness about the suspension that makes the Bigster feel a little vague at first. You learn to push through that, and once there’s a bit of lock on, and the body has found its limit of roll, the Bigster actually corners rather faithfully. Fun? Of a sort, yes.
Then, we come to the kicker. To the laying down of the winning hand. The final blockbuster. In high-spec Journey trim (dual-zone climate control, electric boot lid, 19-inch alloys, electric driver’s seat adjustment, 10.1-inch touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, heated seats and steering wheel, wireless phone charger and more) this Bigster, including metallic paint, costs €38,285.
That’s not necessarily outrageously cheap, but it’s around €7,000 less than the basic price of a Hyundai Tucson hybrid or a Toyota RAV4. That’s a big chunk of change, and you can save even more if you’re willing to forego hybrid power, and nab a basic 1.2-litre petrol manual version, whose price dips just below €30,000.
It’s not just the price. It’s not just the space, and it’s not just the looks. It’s that the Bigster has a rare combination of talent, of pricing, and of a rightness of feel, plus a sense of character that’s too often absent from other cars in this SUV class.
All it really lacks, for now, is the four-wheel drive to go with the looks and the hybrid, but that’s okay, you can buy a manual petrol 4WD version, and next year there’ll be a hybrid 4WD Bigster with electric rear-axle drive.
At which point, we might just have to reassess which is Ireland’s best all-round car. For now, it’s this.
Lowdown: Dacia Bigster Journey HEV 155
Power: 1.8-litre four-cylinder petrol engine with 37kW electric motor and 1.2kWh lithium-ion battery producing 155hp and 172Nm (engine) + 205Nm (e-motor) of torque and powering the front wheels via an automatic transmission.
CO2 emissions (annual motor tax) 106g/km (€180).
Fuel consumption: 4.7l/100km (WLTP)
0-100km/h: 9.7 secs.
Price: €38,285 as tested, the Bigster starts from €29,990
Our rating: 5/5.
Verdict: Good enough for us to shake off our SUV antipathy. If you’re spending more than this on a new car, you really need to ask why.
