Bucking the trend with our downmarket Dacia

One of the many so-called benefits of living a rural French life I see espoused regularly on social media is the lack of traffic, the absence of potholes and the general French indifference to new cars. There is some truth in these assertations, though I’m not sure about the potholes. They certainly develop every year in LB, but are regularly filled in by the commune team. Second-hand cars do hold their value in France and, if our neighbours are anything to go by, there’s no stigma attached to driving a twenty-year-old Renault with smoke belching out of the exhaust on your weekly trip to the market. It’s a different story here in the UK. We’ve become used to the pothole dodging necessary for a trip into Colchester, but some of the craters could easily cause a serious problem for an unwary cyclist or motorbike. And everyone seems to be driving a new car. Obviously, living in the south-east the traffic density is some of the highest in the country. I do wonder where they are all going sometimes.

In the village, the manufacturer of choice is Audi, closely followed by Range Rover and BMW, though it does boast a few Porsche and a Maserati. There’s a preference too for enormous ‘Chelsea Tractors’ – perhaps they’re better at avoiding the potholes! Most people seem to be driving way in excess of the 30 mph speed limit, despite the activities of the local Speed Watch Team. In fact, last week we were amazed that every car passing us was driving sedately until we turned the corner and spotted the fluorescent jackets in the distance. The next day, speed trap gone, and the speed merchants were back to normal. Mr VV likes to stand on the grass verge, mouthing their vehicle registration or pretending to warn them of a speed trap; half the time the drivers are so wrapped up in their metal cocoon that they don’t even see us.

We’re not car people so any car snobbery tends to go over our heads. In our fantasy life we’d live without a car (not a campervan, obviously 😊). We’d live within walking of distance of good shops, cafes and pubs, the library and any services we needed to access. (Mr VV also dreams of trams, but I think that restricts us to Croydon, Docklands, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Nottingham and Blackpool, none of which are on his preferred locations list). However, living where we are at present, despite being only four miles from Colchester, really does require a car. Unlike many villages, we’re lucky enough to have an hourly bus service, but the decision-makers don’t seem to have worked out that you need to make using it financially attractive – it needs to cost less to go to town on the bus than to drive in and park.

So, with all the running about we need to do for Mr VV’s parents, we came to the conclusion that we needed a car, and that the two cars available weren’t suitable for the job. Our French Ford Fiesta was great, but it was left-hand drive which I wasn’t keen on driving here on the ‘wrong side’, and putting it onto UK plates is neither simple nor easy (as I’m discovering with the campervan). The other alternative was Mr VV dad’s car, but it was small, old and there was no way four adults, his mum’s mobility walker and two dogs were ever going to fit inside it. In fact, the only way to carry the walker was to put it on the back seat. Decision made: we would pool resources and buy a new car. With the choice of scouring the second hand market or buying a new car, we began our research.

Now, Mr VV’s dad is a bit (a lot) of a skinflint, but he also didn’t want a second hand car. Hence, we came up with Dacia. It is the antithesis of our neighbour’s Maserati, but it does exactly the same job. I’d argue it does more, as you can actually fit loads of shopping in the enormous boot, plus the walker and the dogs. Part of the Renault group, but made in Romania, Dacia is fairly basic but functional. We chose the Logan Stepway MCV, which was billed as the UK’s most affordable estate car by pundit Honest John. I'll leave the story of how we negotiated the deal, overcoming the fact that unbeknown to us Mr VV's dad's car had never been serviced and had been involved in some sort of undisclosed accident 😲- facts we found out whilst sitting in the showroom - to another day.

It is a lot bigger than I’m used to, so I’m leaving negotiating the multi-storey car park ramps to Mr VV. However, this poor man’s SUV has got satnav, a decent radio, cruise control, automatic stop-start, reversing camera, electric windows and air con. I just need to wrestle the keys off Mr VV to take it for a spin. It’s a far cry from the Audis and beamers we see every day, but we don’t care what the neighbours say – it’s even got a speed limit warning, obviously their flash motors don’t!