Dacia Bigster to hit UK streets fast as brand signals high hopes for the new SUV
UK brand director says buyers will not be left waiting for Bigster deliveries as they have been for Mk3 Duster
It was close to a year between the unveiling of the third-generation Dacia Duster and the first examples arriving in the UK – but the timeframe for getting the all-new Dacia Bigster onto people’s driveways will be much shorter.
In an exclusive interview, UK brand director Luke Broad told Auto Express that the Bigster, which was revealed in mid-October last year, will go on sale in March and that “first customer deliveries will begin at the end of April”.
Broad said: “It’s all happening super-fast.” He explained that Dacia’s UK sales and marketing team, plus those involved in engineering and commercial functions elsewhere, learned a lot from the launch of the Mk3 Duster – our reigning Small SUV of the Year.
He continued: “The strategy of the brand is focused around the [Renault Group’s] CMF-B platform. The latest Duster was an all-new car, so everything was totally ground up new or revised for Dacia.
“By having the Bigster on exactly the same electronic and mechanical platform, it means all of the route to market challenges that you face with launching any new car have been addressed with the new Duster. Therefore with Bigster, from opening and announcing prices to launching the car, it’s only a two-and-a-half month gap.”
Pricing for the new Bigster is due to be announced soon, and Broad said that eager customers will be able to pre-order the car to ensure they get one of the first examples arriving in April or May.
Despite challenges with getting customers into the latest Duster as quickly as possible, Dacia still saw a 10 per cent increase in its UK sales figure in 2024, compared to 2023.
Broad revealed that the full-hybrid versions of the Duster and seven-seat Jogger proved particularly popular last year, and as a result, as many as 75 per cent of Bigster customers are expected to go for the hybrid model.
The Bigster is also expected to attract more fleet customers than Dacia’s existing models, which should help propel the brand’s growth, as six out of every ten cars registered in the UK in 2024 went to fleets.
Looking further ahead, apart from the Dacia Spring EV, every model in the company’s range now sits on the CMF-B platform, and this will also serve as the underpinnings for the next two models the brand will launch in the hugely important C-segment of the car market, where the Bigster will be competing with other mid-size SUVs.
One is the ‘C-Neo’ hatchback that we learned of last year and could rival the award-winning Skoda Octavia, but no details of the other offering have emerged yet.
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