Dacia Bigster Hybrid - long-term review

It’s been a big month for the Bigster. Home base in Lincolnshire to variously Glasgow and back, Manchester and back, return trips to Oxford and Birmingham, home-to-Ramsgate-to-Worcestershire… and back. Plus the inevitable runs several times to Gatwick and Heathrow. So some 3,200 miles in the last four weeks. Not the most I’ve ever done, but certainly a good chunk to get used to the car and see if it’s pleasant enough for long stints. And it’s been really very good - certainly more than up to the task of crashing through a few thousand miles.

Obviously this isn’t a mega-distance cruiser, but you do learn a lot about a car the more time you spend behind the wheel, so I’ve learned quite a lot. Space in the boot is good but not epic (although hallelujah, the Bigster comes with a spacesaver spare wheel which eats some of the underfloor), rear legroom is excellent. The radio phases slightly and drops out for a second fairly regularly, but the actual sound of the stereo is surprisingly satisfactory.

The seats could be more supportive for larger frames, especially on the base, there are a couple of small trim squeaks that need some smoothing in the dash and I’ve already fitted some liners to the cupholders and door bins, and the reversing camera is low enough resolution that you worry about your eyesight, but otherwise very happy. And it simply won’t do less than 51mpg even if it’s battered down a motorway.

It’s more efficient in mixed driving mind, or especially during stop/start town work, where it seems to operate almost entirely in EV mode. And that’s thanks to the 1.5-litre hybrid motor that is genuinely impressive in this thing. It’s a 1.8-litre four-cylinder by a company called Horse Technologies. So there’s the 107bhp of the engine, a clutchless gearbox, a 1.4kWh battery and a couple of electric motors: one being a 50bhp move-it-about motor, the other a kind of beefed-up starter/generator.

It recovers energy with bizarre efficiency, meaning that a long braking phase will often see it claw back energy like a mad thing. OK, so the battery is small, but it seems to find a way. And it’ll always start off from a pure EV push, meaning that the energy-intense pull away uses the torquiest bit of the drivetrain.

Once on the move, it cycles between combustion and EV, constantly switching - but you don’t really notice it. The interesting stuff is that it has four gears for the engine and a couple more for the electric motor. So it juggles between what is - very technically - a six-speed transmission stretched between the two powertrains. It obviously works - it’s getting slightly more mpg than the family Skoda Fabia 1.0-litre petrol. Albeit a slightly venerable Fabia these days.

Generally though, it’s hard not to be impressed. And the best bit? When you tell people it’s 26 grand in this spec, people are genuinely shocked. Given that everything seems to be at least 10k more than you think it might be, that’s a huge win.