This is the new Dacia Spring. Or the facelifted Dacia Spring, depending on which way you look at it. The cute little electric crossover has been on sale on the continent since 2021, but facelift time is your first opportunity to get your hands on a proper right-hand drive version.
As a purveyor of cheap and cheerful cars Dacia has very fine margins, so a new model has to be a slam dunk to earn its keep. Dacia’s UK team had to prove the car would sell over here before the carmaker would go to the trouble of glueing the steering wheel on the other side of the cabin.
So while everyone else pumps out £60k electric SUVs, along comes the Spring at a mere £15k to shake things up a bit: the EV market and its passengers, as we'll get onto shortly.
The Spring is classed as an A-segment car, which puts it in line with the likes of the Kia Picanto, Fiat Panda and Toyota Aygo X. But it draws a useful line in the sand against all the bloated, over-batteried SUVs that are pummelling the roads into dust.
It’s tiny, it’s good value and it weighs less than a tonne, which means even though its battery is a mere 26.8kWh, it punches well above its weight with an efficient drive. In fact, over a 40-mile or so run through French motorways, country roads and inner city we saw as much as 6.7mi/kWh. That's bonkers. Any other EV would be doing brilliantly if it crept over 5.0.
Back in the UK on a cold autumnal day, we saw 5.2mi/kWh on an inner city and motorway run. Still far superior to most rivals in those conditions.
The Spring is actually a hoot to drive, provided there isn’t anyone else onboard. The ride befits the name: the car bounces over bumps, rolls energetically through corners and clings gamely on whatever you try to throw at it. You’ll find yourself grinning whether you mean to or not.
Add passengers and you start to develop a bit more self-consciousness about the whole thing, watching people flail about like trainers in the washing machine. Dial things back massively for your nearest and dearest and the car is smooth over bumps and comfortable around town.
Don’t want to carry passengers, ever? The Dacia Spring ‘Cargo’ might be for you, which bins the rear seats and gets a mesh bulkhead, white paint and steel wheels.
Of the people carrying variant, 44bhp and 64bhp versions are available: both have the same WLTP range of 140 miles and consumption figures of 4.4-4.6mi/kWh depending on your wheel size. As we've seen already, you can beat that.
Neither is quick. The entry motor does 0–62mph in 19.1 seconds, the more powerful version 13.7s. Both have a 78mph top speed. We’ve only driven the faster (!) version so far. We're not sure we’d have the patience for the slower one...
