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From Dacia 1300 to Dacia Logan/Duster. The History of a Controversial Brand (Page 5)

Dacia ShifterDacia 1320Dacia 1307 Double CabDacia DenemDacia 1307 Double CabDacia Liberta
Continued from Page 4 of "From Dacia 1300 to Dacia Logan/Duster. The History of a Controversial Brand"In 1983, a facelift was applied to the regular Dacia 1310 models. A 5-speed gearbox came on board along with some extra cm3 for the engines and, for the 1310 Li variant with a 1.4L engine, monopoint injection by Bosch which delivered 62 HP and a top speed of 88 mph.

The 1310 is still the most widely recognized and long-lived Dacia model ever. It was sold on foreign markets as well under different names. In the UK it was called Dacia Denem, while the pickup version was named Dacia Shifter and the 1310 wagon was marketed as Dacia Delta. Attemps to brush-up and sell cars from another Romanian brand were made leading to the ARO 10 model being sold as Dacia Duster. Sounds familiar?

In 1985, engineers at Dacia start working on the first 100% Romanian-made car. In the meantime, the Dacia 1200 hatchback continues to be sold through 1990 and becomes the foundation for 1991’s Dacia 1325 Liberta model. The name comes from the Romanian word for freedom (“libertate”), which understandably was very popular at that time, following the 1989 revolution and regime overthrow. The Liberta had a short life span and was discontinued in 1996.

The Dacia 1307 double cabbed pick-up and its 1309 variant were launched in 1992, among other desperate attempts to bring the aging and technically crippled lineup up to date. Incidentally, interested buyers existed and a number of these cars were delivered to clients from China.

What followed was a long and tedious process of testing, trials and transcedental meditation along with an unfortunate down spiral of sales. Only some of these are worth mentioning: the Dacia 1610 diesel experiment, which had a VolksWagen engine, Dacia Star with curved side windows, Dacia 1308, Dacia 1320 CN1, CN2 and CN3.

All this while work continued on the new Dacia model which, hopefully you still remember, was started way back in 1985.

It must be pointed out that Romania, as a whole, was now in a period of great and painful transformation. Ceausescu and his Communist Party had been wiped away after a spontaneous (or was it organized?) revolution in 1989. After many decades of grievous communism, the country was going through the pains of evolution and concepts such as “market economy”, “capitalism”, “sales” came into view. It was all Greek to Dacia management and engineers, who were only used to work on orders coming from Ceau_escu and his troupe.

After 1989 the spotlight was on Ion Iliescu, and ex-communist who became the first president of a country that was torn by conflict and daily transformation, with no steady course of action planned and a single focus: to never fall into the hands of communism, be it local or Eastern. As a side note, Iliescu managed to stay in office for three terms, even though there are some who claim there were only two (which is, in fact, the maximum allowed by law). In the end, Iliescu represented for Romania what the 90s were for Dacia - a time of painful transition from communism to capitalism.
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