The Dacia badged Duster recently tasted success by hitting an impressive milestone of 4,00,000 units produced since it was launched in the year 2010. The Romanian based auto manufacturer, Dacia rolled out the unit touching the 4,00,000 milestone from the company’s Mioveni plant. The Duster touching the milestone was silver coloured all-wheel drive model, featuring a 1.5-litre K9K dCi diesel engine producing 110 BHP of power output, which will be delivered to a French customer. The company has now launched an LPG version of the Duster in France.
The compact SUV has contributed to a great extent for the French automaker since its launch. The Dacia Duster has received many automotive international awards including the 2011 Car of the Year in Croatia, the 2012 Best 4×4 in France and the 2011 Residual Value Champion in Germany. The compact SUV is currently facing a head on competition with the sub 4-metre Ford EcoSport in the international market. It will be interesting to see the sales figures of both the SUVs after the launch of the EcoSport in the Indian market.
We expect Renault to introduce new variants of the Duster including a 4×4 variant, to take on the soon to be released EcoSport. The Duster is a well packaged compact SUV offering good amount of space, practicality in city driving conditions, butch looks with adequate levels of equipment at an affordable price point. The Renault Duster is available in India in both petrol and diesel variants including a 1.6-litre petrol engine with an output of 104 PS and a 1.5-litre diesel with 85 PS and 110 PS tune levels. It comes at a starting price of Rs. 7.69 lakhs (ex-showroom Delhi).
