Dacia Jogger review

It’s an entirely serviceable design and one that you’ll have no problems living with from day to day – no danger of all the aircon controls being shifted to a touchscreen display here. And this car does get manual aircon as standard even on the cheapest versions, which is a bonus.

Talk me through the specs.

The entry-level ‘Essential’ does without a touchscreen (yay!) but comes with pretty much everything you’d need in a car: seats, steering wheel, a height-adjustable driver’s seat, six other seats, Bluetooth, and manual air-con. Told you it was simple.

There’s lots of safety assistance bundled in like emergency braking, stability control with hill start, tyre pressure monitoring, parking sensors, attention warnings (boo!), lane departure warning… you get the gist.

But I can’t live without a screen!

Then you’ll have to step up to the mid-range ‘Expression’ trim, which gets that new 10in touchscreen, a soft-feel wheel, an e-handbrake, and a 7in digital display for the driver if you go for the hybrid.

‘Extreme’ isn’t, sadly. It’s the top spec, but adds wireless charging, Dacia’s ‘Media Nav’ system, a better stereo, multi-view camera and fancier upholstery with copper stitching.

Exactly how much space are we talking here?

The Jogger’s main draw is that it has seven seats, and it has been thoughtfully designed to take a 1.9m tall adult in every seat, with the rows arranged stadium style. Tall grown-ups might not be entirely thrilled about long journeys in the very back of the car – especially as the seats aren't the most comfortable we've ever tried – but they’ll fit, and that’s the main thing.

The rearmost seats can be folded or removed (and they weigh a spritely 10kg each, which is impressive) and the second row of seats will fold and tuck in behind the front row. Those ones don’t slide or come out, but you’ll have to go for a more expensive rival for such fanciness.

With all the seats up you’ve got a paltry 160 litres of bootspace, rising to 565 litres with the third row folded down and a cavernous 1,807 litres with the second row felled too. It’s an impressive load space, one metre wide and two metres deep.

Dacia says there are 60 possible combinations of seat in the back of the Jogger, which sounds plausible but the kids could spend a good chunk of half term counting them if you wanted to keep them busy. The carmaker is also keen to point out that the hybrid doesn’t compromise load space in the way so many other hybrids suffer from.