The Logan cars have been manufactured as Renault, Nissan in Mexico and Mahindra in India, as well as Tondar in Iran and an MCV version Lada in Russia.
The Renault group assembled more than 5.83 million cars based on the Logan platform in plants from South America and Africa to Europe and Asia since June 2004 through June 1, 2014. Regardless of where the assembly takes place, all the models built on the Logan platform use complete knockdown kits from Romania.
It was Logan that made Renault decide to invest in Renault Technologie Roumanie, the second largest testing center of the French carmaker after its center in Paris, which not only put Romania on the map of carmakers, where it ranks eighth in Europe at the moment, but also in the league of countries where cars are designed from scratch. Which is why the engineers are already working on the future models despite the second Logan generation having been launched only two years ago.
“Romania has proven it can be a winner and that Romanians can be a pleasant surprise in very competitive industries,” said Nicolas Maure, chairman and chief executive officer of Automobile Dacia.
Dacia is already thinking of the future Logan generation, which it wants to launch in a few years. He sees the Logan model as something with a different style in ten years, especially when it comes to energy efficiency. Everybody is looking for oil now and even though they do find new deposits, a time will come when it runs out, so the company needs to take that into account, Maure added.
The next Logans will probably be launched in 2016 and 2020, first a facelift version and then a new generation in its own right in six years from now. The engineers at Renault Technologie Roumanie are already working on them.
Logan was not just a car model for Romania, but also the basis of an automotive industry with more than 100,000 jobs created by some of the largest automotive component manufacturers in the world, such as Continental. Bosch, Draexlmaier and Faurecia.
Dacia, which assembled a record high number of cars last year (342,000) and posted its highest revenue ever, more than EUR4.4 billion, accounts for 10% of Romania’s exports at the moment.
Most of the Logan cars (60%) have been assembled in Romania, in the Mioveni plant so far, where Maure says Renault has invested over EUR2 billion and which exports 90% of production. Logan accounts for some 35% of Dacia’s total production in the last few years and is a real phenomenon on the auto market. Whereas many analysts were skeptical about it at first, seeing it as too bold a plan to be successful on major markets, Logan is now sold on more than 40 markets and is one the growth drivers of the Romanian exports. In all, the plant in Mioveni assembled almost 940,000 Logan units out of a total of more than 1.4 million units, with the rest made in Renault’s Casablanca plant.
To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Logan model, Dacia launched a limited 2,000-unit issue of the current model available on the Romanian market only. The novelty is that this is actually a Renault Symbol sold as Dacia sporting the 16″ steel wheels of the Sandero Stepway model. The limited Logan model comes with the same options as the Symbol sold only in Turkey and Algeria. It will be available in two versions, one with a 1.2 liter 75 HP gas engine and the other with a 1.5 liter dCi 75 HP diesel engine at a price of EUR9,400 and EUR11,300.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)