Back in November, my pa ordered one of these to part-ex his then current daily (a Sandero Stepway diseasel). He wanted something with more room than the Stepway, but had been very happy with that car and with the service from our local dealership (Sutton Park) so it felt like a no-brainer to him.
Then a few things went sideways. Pa passed away in February from a combination of cancer (probably started out in the pancreas, headed bonewards) and COVID (some silly **** brought it into the ward because hey, masking up rules are just for other people right?). A couple of months later mum's incredibly dear to her Fiat 500 that she'd had from new in 2008 was written off by a young lad driving clean into the front of her at some traffic lights in Lichfield. She was mostly unhurt beyond a burn/abrasion from the airbag blowing, the car giving its life for her. But this meant that we decided that we were still definitely going ahead with the Stepway-Jogger exchange. And it finally arrived a couple of weeks ago.
The not-so-good first
The gearshift is a bit...odd. 1st, 3rd and 5th are veeeeeeeery long throws, 2nd, 4th and 6th much shorter. Coming down the 'box out of 6th you cannot find another gear unless you go to 5th first, there's just no skipping it on the way down.
By default it chimes a cutesy little welcome at you when you get in that gets real old, real fast. Had to delve into the configuration menu on the dashboard to get rid of that.
Eco mode remains as stupid as it is on other Dacias - it doesn't actually do anything to improve fuel economy, it just blunts the throttle response to the point where the car is undriveable in Burton town traffic.
I'm still of the opinion that electronic parking brakes were the answer to a question that no-one was asking in the first ******* place.
The rather better
The engine is a little gem. It's a one litre inline-3 petrol turbo of Nissan-ish origin and it's rather good. Enough power (outside of eco mode) to stay out of its own way, smooth-as-buttah from idle up through the rev range, quiet and seems to be economical. We're taking the car up-country for my gran's birthday soon so we'll see what motorway fuel consumption is like then.
Ride quality is excellent, even with the parlous state of the roads around here.
The touchscreen for the radio/telematics fit is easy enough to use. There's a reversing camera that's actually fairly useful, and parking sensors front and back that are only as crap as they are in...well, pick a car. I know where the extremities of the body are thank-you very much, the back is flat and the bonnet shaped so you know where the front corners are. Got to find out if you can disable them without killing the camera as well. The screen is Android Auto/Apple CarPlay compatible for music and satnav purposes.
The climate control actually controls the interior climate quite well.
Seats are excellent. Plenty of room inside even for people like me who are long in the leg and only in shape if 'round' counts as a shape. And then there's the Jogger's party piece - you can run it as a seven seater, or fold the rearmost seats down to gain some boot space, or remove them entirely and gain a lot of boot space. I reckon we'll be removing them when the car goes over to southern France in the summer, which will get us the load carrying capacity to bring our allotment of wine home.
So...yeah. Good car.
Then a few things went sideways. Pa passed away in February from a combination of cancer (probably started out in the pancreas, headed bonewards) and COVID (some silly **** brought it into the ward because hey, masking up rules are just for other people right?). A couple of months later mum's incredibly dear to her Fiat 500 that she'd had from new in 2008 was written off by a young lad driving clean into the front of her at some traffic lights in Lichfield. She was mostly unhurt beyond a burn/abrasion from the airbag blowing, the car giving its life for her. But this meant that we decided that we were still definitely going ahead with the Stepway-Jogger exchange. And it finally arrived a couple of weeks ago.
The not-so-good first
The gearshift is a bit...odd. 1st, 3rd and 5th are veeeeeeeery long throws, 2nd, 4th and 6th much shorter. Coming down the 'box out of 6th you cannot find another gear unless you go to 5th first, there's just no skipping it on the way down.
By default it chimes a cutesy little welcome at you when you get in that gets real old, real fast. Had to delve into the configuration menu on the dashboard to get rid of that.
Eco mode remains as stupid as it is on other Dacias - it doesn't actually do anything to improve fuel economy, it just blunts the throttle response to the point where the car is undriveable in Burton town traffic.
I'm still of the opinion that electronic parking brakes were the answer to a question that no-one was asking in the first ******* place.
The rather better
The engine is a little gem. It's a one litre inline-3 petrol turbo of Nissan-ish origin and it's rather good. Enough power (outside of eco mode) to stay out of its own way, smooth-as-buttah from idle up through the rev range, quiet and seems to be economical. We're taking the car up-country for my gran's birthday soon so we'll see what motorway fuel consumption is like then.
Ride quality is excellent, even with the parlous state of the roads around here.
The touchscreen for the radio/telematics fit is easy enough to use. There's a reversing camera that's actually fairly useful, and parking sensors front and back that are only as crap as they are in...well, pick a car. I know where the extremities of the body are thank-you very much, the back is flat and the bonnet shaped so you know where the front corners are. Got to find out if you can disable them without killing the camera as well. The screen is Android Auto/Apple CarPlay compatible for music and satnav purposes.
The climate control actually controls the interior climate quite well.
Seats are excellent. Plenty of room inside even for people like me who are long in the leg and only in shape if 'round' counts as a shape. And then there's the Jogger's party piece - you can run it as a seven seater, or fold the rearmost seats down to gain some boot space, or remove them entirely and gain a lot of boot space. I reckon we'll be removing them when the car goes over to southern France in the summer, which will get us the load carrying capacity to bring our allotment of wine home.
So...yeah. Good car.
It ate the ~100 miles of A50-M6-M60-M66 just fine. Perfectly comfortable, nice and quiet at cruising speeds aside from some tyre roar on that bit of weird road surface near JCB. The cruise control is easily one of the better I've used in manual 'box cars as well - never been particularly happy with CC when not paired with an automatic, but this worked fine.