Dacia Jogger: Pack your swimming trunks

Attention soccer mums. A new player enters the field. With the Jogger, Dacia is bringing something like an egg-laying automobile woolly milk sow onto the market. The crossover has to be that too, because it replaces two established models: the Lodgy and the MCV. “With the Jogger, Dacia is reinventing the seven-seater family vehicle,” explains Dacia boss Denis Le Vot. Seven seats? Half a soccer team fits in there. When you think of numbers like this, one inevitably thinks of monstrous American vans. However, the Dacia Jogger is only 4.55 meters long. For good reason, because the strategists of the Renault subsidiary see good earning opportunities in the compact segment and want to snatch away competitors such as the Opel Grandland and the Peugeot 5008 with the crossover from the beginning of next year. “The jogger combines the length of a station wagon with the spaciousness of a van and the appearance of an SUV,” says Product Manager Andrea Guinea, explaining the formula for success. And all of this for a starting price of around 15,000 euros.

The wheelbase of 2.90 meters and the height of 1.63 meters are two clues as to how the spatial equation should work out. A first seat test verifies the result. The third row is not only suitable for the F-youth, adults with a height of 1.85 meters can also be accommodated. A trip from Munich to Hamburg will not be a pleasure, but short distances are always possible. If there are only two people on the road, 1,819 liters fit in the trunk. With five seats it is 565 liters and with full seats 160 liters. To get a flat loading area, you have to fold the seat cushions vertically upwards. If there is not enough space, the roof rails can be quickly converted into a roof rack with a load capacity of 80 kilograms. Sounds like Simply Clever, it is.

In the interior, the jogger cannot deny his origin. The new Dacia shares the CMF platform with the Sandero and therefore also the instrument panel including a touchscreen with a size of up to eight inches. There are also some shelves in the interior that have a total volume of 24 liters, including a lockable glove compartment that holds seven liters. In addition to infotainment, the jogger offers an LED low beam, on request an automatic air conditioning, seat heating, a blind spot warning or a keyless go function.

There are two supercharged one-liter, three-cylinder petrol engines to choose from for the market launch. Including the newly developed TCe 110 all-aluminum unit. The engine has low-friction coatings on the cylinder liners and injection nozzles located centrally in the combustion chambers. Added to this are the exhaust manifold, which is partially integrated into the cylinder head, the variable adjustment of the intake camshaft and the demand-controlled oil pump. This technology package results in an output of 81 kW / 110 PS, a maximum torque of 200 Newton meters at 2,900 rpm and low consumption.

The alternative is the TCe 100 ECO-G. As the name suggests, this is a bivalent engine that can also run on LPG. Equipped with this engine, the jogger should consume 7.6 l / 100 km and thus travel more than 1,000 kilometers. So that this works, two tanks are installed. In addition to the 50 liter petrol container, there is another with a capacity of 40 liters in the spare wheel well. At the beginning of 2022, the Dacia E-friends will get their money’s worth with a full hybrid version of the Jogger. The drive train of the HEV version is taken from the Renault Clio, so the range should be similar.