“It’s not easy to come up with a more evolved product, to match the demands of the customer, who already has expectations. It’s not easy to just stay reliable in this car universe that is undergoing a paradigm shift,” Buse told ZF in an interview.
The Romanian engineer, who has worked for Toyota in Canada for 15 years, as well as for General Motors, left Romania in 1990 and came back last year when he took over the reins of Renault Technologie Roumanie (RTR) from French Philippe Prevel. Renault’s center in Romania is the second largest of the French group after the one in Paris and its main mission is to develop entry-level models for the carmaker such as Dacia.
Other than Logan 2, Renault Technologie Roumanie was involved in the Logdy project, the multipurpose vehicle to be launched by Dacia next March, which will not be made at the company’s plant in Mioveni (southern Romania) but in Tangiers, Morocco.
“Dacia Logdy was started before RTR even existed. We at RTR contributed certain parts, but nothing essential. We cannot say exactly how much as a percentage, but it was not an essential percentage, somewhere below 20%,” RTR’s boss said.
The French carmaker was already planning to launch a Dacia branded MPV in 2006 or 2007, when Logan MCV and Pick-up and Van utility vehicles were launched.
“The Logan 2 project was almost entirely done in Romania. How much exactly was done here, that we cannot say. We are proud of this achievement, said Sorin Buse.
RTR’s boss says that the new Logan was designed as all the other Dacia models to be a “durable, reliable product with a price/quality ratio that is impossible to beat”. Logan 2 will remain a low-cost product like the current generation.
Logan 2’s platform, X52 will be used for other Dacia Renault models, like the original Logan’s X90, used for the six models in the Dacia range and then sold as Renault, Nissan and Mahindra.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)