“An Urban Gray Duster SL Extreme vehicle marked the threshold of 10,000,000 cars produced under the Dacia brand, on Wednesday, April 20, 2022. The anniversary vehicle has left the general assembly line of the Mioveni Vehicle Plant and will join the Dacia collection of historical models “, the company said in a press statement.
The first vehicle under the Dacia brand was manufactured at the Mioveni plant on August 20, 1968.
Between 1968 and 2014, Dacia produced the first five million cars, and in the following eight years, Dacia made other five million vehicles.
Currently, vehicles under the Dacia brand are produced at five assembly plants worldwide: one plant in Romania, two plants in Morocco, one in Algeria, as well as one in China, since 2020, where the all-electric Dacia Spring model is produced.
As a result of the co-operation with French Renault Group that started in 1966, the production of Dacia cars under a licence began with the Renault 8, locally known as the Dacia 1,100 vehicle. In 1969, the Dacia 1,300 model went into production under a Renault 12 licence. The model was manufactured for 35 years and gave birth to a whole family of vehicles (station wagons, sports cars, vans) that marked the automotive landscape of Romania in the last decades of the 20th century. In 1995, a new generation of models, fully designed and developed in Romania, was released under the name of Dacia Nova.
The acquisition of the Mioveni plant by Renault Group in 1999 opened a new chapter in the history of Dacia, which became, with the launch of the Logan model in 2004, a manufacturer with an international vocation. In 2005, the production of the Dacia Logan model began at the first assembly plant outside Romania, at the Somaca plant in Casablanca, Morocco. Subsequently, its production capacity was expanded to include a plant in Tangier, also in Morocco, in 2012, and in the Algerian city of Oran in 2016. In 2020, a plant in the Chinese city of Shyian started manufacturing Dacia’s Spring model, the first Dacia’s all-electric model.
“In the 54 years that have passed since manufacturing the first Dacia vehicle, six car model families have succeeded each other on the assembly lines of the five plants. Produced at the assembly plants in Mioveni, Tangier and Casablanca, the Sandero, including the Sandero Stepway, is the most internationally successful Dacia model – being the best-selling car for individuals in Europe since 2017. In its turn, the Duster model – manufactured exclusively at the Mioveni plant – is the best-selling SUV in Europe to the same category of customers,” Dacia also said in its press statement.
The top three most manufactured Dacia car models since the company’s inception are Sandero / Sandero Stepway (2.6 million units), Dacia 1,300/1,310 and related models (2.3 million units) and Duster (2.1 million units).
Dacia is present across 44 countries on four continents, and the vast majority of its sales are recorded in Europe, with France, Germany and Italy being the main markets.