Dacia Jogger Review (2021-present)

What is the Dacia Jogger?

The Jogger is the most practical model from what is already a very practical brand: Renault-owned Dacia. It is based on the same platform as the Renault Clio and Dacia Sandero superminis, but with a stretched wheelbase, added ground clearance, and a longer body that allows it to pull off an element of SUV style as well as accommodate seven people. In fact, up to the car’s windscreen pillars it’s essentially a Sandero, but then the roof line kicks up by 4cm and the wheelbase is extended, which is what gives it the interior space to make it a seven-seater.

The Jogger has two unique selling points. The first is that for a seven-seater its external dimensions are relatively compact, particularly as far as its width goes. This helps to make it very easy to drive. The second is its price: Dacia is known for offering cars (including the Sandero and Duster) that are excellent value for money, and the Jogger is no different. The range starts from around £18,000, and even a top-spec model comes in at under £25,000. Pay on finance, and Dacia will charge you less than £300 per month, with a similar amount required as a deposit. It is a seven-seater for supermini money.

How practical is it?

When it comes to the practicality and versatility of its interior, the Jogger is neither as good as the best MPVs, nor as bad as you’d expect given its price.

All models come with seven seats as standard, and with all those seats in place, the boot capacity measures 212 litres. That’s a little less than you’d get in a city car, but will hold a few shopping bags, or a couple of kids’ scooters. To extend the boot space you can fold the two rearmost seats. Unlike in the best MPVs, these do not drop flat into the floor, but instead the backrests fold on to the base and then the whole seat topples forwards. The levers to operate the seats are basic but functional. At this point, the Jogger’s boot space rivals that of an estate car. To extend it further, you can undo four more clips and remove the two rearmost seats entirely. At only 10kg each they are surprisingly wieldy, but you will of course need somewhere to store them.

For even larger loads, the second-row seats fold in a 60/40 split and then – as with the rear ones – the bases topple forwards. The result is that the Jogger is not far off being a small van.

To round out storage, there are big door bins on all four doors, a large glovebox, a few cupholders scattered around the car (including in the third row) and mid-spec Comfort/Expression models and above feature a driver’s armrest with a built-in cubby.

Moving on to passenger space, and the Jogger’s third row of seats are both easy to access (you simply topple the second row forwards) and amazingly roomy. Wide seat bases, excellent headroom and decent legroom mean kids or adults can travel in the third row without feeling short-changed. There’s no Isofix in seats six or seven, but you do get access to a 12V power outlet and the option of clicking open the rearmost windows.

In the second row, the outer two seats do feature Isofix. However, they are also unusually narrow so if your car seat is one where you also have to do up the car’s seatbelt, you might struggle. The upside is that the middle seat is surprisingly wide, so sitting three older kids (once out of car seats) or adults across the back is possible, helped by there being an almost flat floor and loads of space for feet under the front seats. The second-row seats do not slide on runners or feature adjustable backrests, but there’s plenty of headroom and legroom. The trays that live on the back of the front seats on mid- and high-spec cars look neat but there’s barely enough room to fold them out.

In the front, there’s a generous amount of room so that even tall adults will feel comfortable, along with lots of useful in-car storage (including an armrest with storage in Comfort and Extreme SE models).

What's it like to drive?

The steering wheel in the Jogger adjusts for reach and height, as does the driver’s seat. Combined with excellent all-round visibility and light controls, it makes the Jogger an easy car to get used to driving.

Two engines are available. There's a 1.0-litre, three-cylinder turbo petrol, or a 1.6-litre petrol hybrid with two electric motors, badged as the Hybrid 140.

While it might sound a little puny to equip a seven-seater with a 1.0-litre petrol engine, the TCe 110 unit in question does in fact deliver perfectly adequate performance. The 0-62mph dash is accomplished in 11.2 seconds, but really it’s the responsiveness of this engine that surprises. The three-cylinder petrol unit is turbocharged to deliver 109bhp, and feels usefully strong from around 2,000rpm. It helps that the Jogger weighs just 1,200kg, which is remarkably light for this type of car. The six-speed manual gearbox has a slightly notchy feel, but is not unpleasant to use.

The 1.6 hybrid has more power at 138bhp, and also delivers superior fuel economy with a claimed 57mpg in official tests. It's an impressive system that spends a lot of time in electric running. It's 0-62mph time, meanwhile, is 10.1 seconds.

Both engines offer decent pulling power, but with the three-cylinder unit in particular, you'll notice that it's very vocal and sends numerous shakes and vibrations through the car’s controls, particularly when idling. In order to cut weight and costs, Dacia has gone light on the sound deadening, and you can certainly notice that in terms of engine noise, as well as drone from the tyres and the rustling of wind around the car’s door mirrors. Even running the air-conditioning emits an audible hiss from within the engine compartment. Not necessarily what you expect from a new car these days. While the hybrid is quieter when running in its electric mode, the petrol 1.6-litre engine is still noisy when it does need to run.

Ride comfort is fine: while the Jogger is not terribly sophisticated in the way it negotiates imperfections in the road surface, nor is it terrible. What’s more, it’s able to cushion occupants from bumps and potholes without resorting to soggy suspension that causes the car’s body to flop over when cornering. Light and reasonably accurate steering, along with the Jogger’s narrow body, make this an easy car to guide down a road. Push harder and things will start to get ragged in this front-wheel-drive MPV, but within the boundaries of this type of car and the kind of duties it’s designed to undertake (never mind the low asking price), the Jogger is a perfectly accomplished performer.

Technology equipment and infotainment

One way Dacia achieves the Jogger’s low starting price is to leave out sophisticated technology. So, while there’s air-conditioning, you can’t have dual-zone climate control. There’s a trip computer, but it’s black and white rather than colour. There’s even a reversing camera on higher-spec models, but it has a very low resolution. And where other seven seaters might offer numerous USB chargers for those sitting in the back, the Jogger makes do with a simple 12v socket.

The infotainment system is similarly basic. In fact, on entry-level Essential models there isn’t a touchscreen at all, but a DAB radio and a phone holder. You can then download a Dacia Media Control app to your phone to access various third-party apps for music and navigation.

Mid-spec Comfort models and above include an eight-inch touchscreen (with built-in Navigation on Extreme SE spec). It’s a fairly basic unit with a low-res screen, but it’s quick to respond, easy to navigate, and includes Bluetooth, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Later on, the trim levels offered were named Essential, Expression and Extreme, but equipment levels remained broadly similar.

Dacia Jogger running costs

As well as its low starting price, Dacia offers just two options. There’s metallic paint, and a spare wheel. Dacia claims that its customers like this simplicity, and we can see why.

It’s not just the Jogger’s low purchase price that impresses, however. Its 1.0-litre, three-cylinder turbo petrol engine delivers a real-world 45-50mpg in mixed driving conditions, helped because the Jogger weighs so little. Go for the hybrid and you can expect to realise 50-55mpg, while CO2 emissions are 112g/km versus the petrol model's 130g/km. As a hybrid, you'll get a modest £10 discount on the annual rate of VED once the car is more than a year old. Useful, but plainly not alone worth the more than £3,000 uplift in purchase price associated with the Jogger Hybrid.

The Jogger is predicted to have excellent residual values (as with the Sandero, it’s predicted to hold on to around 55-60% of its value after three-years and 60,000 miles), meaning depreciation needn’t be as much of a concern as it might be with other cars.

Dacia Jogger reliability

It would appear that the low price of a Dacia doesn't mean you have to compromise on mechanical dependability. The 2024 edition of the What Car? Reliability survey places the budget brand in 6th place of the 31 involved for reliability, and it's been ranked even higher in previous years.

The standard warranty lasts for three years and 60,000 miles, which is well behind the likes of Toyota, Kia and Hyundai, but par for the course compared with most other marques.