Dacia locked in for Australia

Dacia, the starting-price member of the Renault Group, is locked and loaded for Australia.

The newly-appointed Renault importer, Ateco Group, has committed to the Romanian brand as a high priority for future growth.

The Dacia Sandero, a light-sized hatchback which came to international notoriety through its popularity with former Top Gear host James May, has just been totally renewed and is likely to be the spearhead, alongside the Dacia Sandero Stepway light SUV version.

But Ateco is also focused on the Dacia Duster small SUV and the Duster Oroch dual-cab ute that would hand it a pint-sized pick-up built along similar lines to the popular Subaru Brumby.

Indeed, all small commercial vehicles from Dacia are on the agenda. They would be sold alongside larger Chinese-made LDV models for which Ateco is also responsible in Australia, including the LDV T60 ute and G10 and Deliver 9 vans.

“We will be bringing Dacia in. We are talking to them right now about the details,” the head of Ateco, Neville Crichton, revealed to carsales.

“It will happen. Absolutely. Dacia will fit in below Renault.”

There is no firm timeline yet, but Ateco is keen to get evaluation cars into Australia in coming months for a full-scale push in 2022.

“We think the product is good. We’ve had a good look at it. We’ve looked at Dacia for 10 years or so,” said Crichton.

“But they weren’t ready to come to the market. As soon as Luca de Meo got control of Renault we talked to him about it.”

Related: Five feisty Dacia models we’d love to see here

Crichton is extremely keen on Dacia and even took the time to highlight the correct pronunciation of its name, a problem that took more than a decade for Hyundai to overcome in Australia after it was launched in the 1980s as ‘Hi-un-dai’ before being switched in the early 1990s to the correct ‘He-un-day’.

“It’s Dar-c-ia. Definitely not Dash-a,” he said.

Crichton said a lot of preliminary work has been done on Dacia, from its position to branding and pricing, with some decisions still to be finalised.

“It’s a matter of whether we bring it in as Dacia, or under the Renault brand. In South Africa it's sold under the Renault brand. It’s not decided yet,” he said.

“We see Renault going upmarket, more than it is at the moment. That’s the plan.

“And then, of course, the other part of Renault that is attractive to us is the van market in Australia. We’re good at that.”

Ateco has done a lot of successful work with LDV and is mostly focused on its commercial vehicles, including larger vans.

“Between LDV and Renault and Dacia, I think we shouldn’t be far off 35 to 40 per cent of the van market,” said Crichton.

“If you look at our van business, it’s accelerating. We’re just starting to get a reasonable amount of stock on the ground with it.

“But we cannot get LDV at the moment. We’re struggling. We’re sitting with about 5000 back-orders to China at the moment.

“This month (June) we’ll retail about 1200, but it should be 2000. We just cannot get product, because of the ships.”

Crichton sees parallels between the new move with Renault-Dacia, as well as LDV, and his pioneering work with Kia in Australia.

He took on the South Korean brand as an import agent and then built it up before selling the local rights back to Kia.

“We built Kia up to over 30,000 cars. Our Kia volume reached 27,000 in the last 10 months, but we had another 6000 cars waiting,” he said.

“We never had a car to give them. Every car we could get was sold.

“Now we know we’ve got to expand to survive. We’ve got to do over 30,000 vehicles a year to make our Ateco business work.”