Boxy supermini proves a car doesn’t have to be sporty to be fun
The original Fiat Panda vibes are strong with this one. Equally, this could well be what 70mph on the A34 feels like in an Ikea chest of drawers.
A good one, mind you, that’s had all of those funny lock-screw things fully tightened up and has yet to be disassembled and lashed back together again in a house move. A solid, well-built, four-berth Malm, perhaps.
This car’s body sides are flat and steep; in the nearer case, almost close enough to prop your ribcage against as you barrel along.
Its silhouette is boxy and short. Its wheels are little, narrow and just a bit castorish. It has one windscreen wiper arm and two washer jets and needs no more of either.
And its horn sounds like it could have played a bit part in the kids’ TV show Brum.
The driving experience is quite blowy and squeaky at motorway speeds but, perhaps more so elsewhere, simple, direct and cheery.
Sure, the steering is a bit slow-geared, I guess because the car needs to guard its stability. But it rides quite well for something so small and feels fun even though it isn’t remotely sporty.
This is what it feels like to drive Britain’s new cheapest electric car: the Dacia Spring. We reviewed this car previously, but not the bottom-rung version that you can buy for £14,995.
How many combustion-engined cars cost less these days? Just the one, by my count, and yup, it’s another Dacia.
The Spring does have back seats, but it would be a squeeze for four adults. Two plus as many sub-teenaged kids would be fine.
It produces 44bhp, which sounds meagre even by city car standards. It doesn’t feel that way around town, though, and at least until you get up beyond 40mph, because you also get 92lb ft of torque at low motor speeds (which, with a single-speed transmission, also means low road speeds).
Out of town, it does struggle a little for oomph. Dacia’s official 0-62mph claim is a whisker under 20sec, and it’s probably only because we’ve tested one or two cars in recent years that won’t even do 62mph that we’ve experienced slower acceleration.
Top speed is a heady 78mph – in this case, I suspect, actually a practical, mechanical threshold, not a ‘sensible’ electronically governed one.
But I would bet that 0-40mph performance is a lot more respectable (we will road test one soon enough and find out).
This cheapest version has a lab test range of 140 miles and will promise you around 130 on a full battery, tumbling to about 110 if you’re doing exclusively motorway miles.
No, it’s not much. But it’s more than you would have got from the Honda E a few years ago – a £34,000 car in 2020.
This Spring will cost you less than half of that in 2024, so you’re Kwids in (don’t worry: I’m not actually here every week).
The bigger usability hurdle for it might be charging, because it will only accept AC electricity. It’s not the kind of EV that you can plug in at Chieveley services and pick up another 100 miles of range in half an hour.
The quickest rate it can take is 7.4kW, which means a little under four hours waiting in a garden centre’s car park if you happen to need to go from almost empty to brim full (precisely the scenario in which I find myself as these words are being written. Ooh, Edinburgh Woollen Mill…).
Will that be a problem for it? I shouldn’t think so. Most people will charge their Springs at home, use them exclusively for short-hop trips and turn to other, more suitable cars for longer journeys. Because ‘people’, unlike road testers, aren’t idiots.
Even now, as I sit and wait for its battery to fill, contemplating the fact that it has arguably cost me my Thursday evening, I just can’t help liking it.
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