What's the news?
Dacia's new Duster will make its debut at the Frankfurt motor show in a few days' time, and it has been granted a sharper new look courtesy of Renault Group head of design Laurens Van Den Acker. If he can make a Scenic look sexy, imagine what he can do with a Duster...
Actually, what he can do is make it look like the old Duster, but neater. The grille, lights (which now have LED signatures) and bonnet all flow more nicely into one another and there's now a huge, silver (and scratch-proof) bash plate under the nose.
The window line has gone up a bit, giving the cabin a slightly more turret-like effect, while there are new 17-inch alloy wheels (not standard, we presume) and chunky black wheelarch extensions. At the back, the tail lights are bigger, more square, and stretch out further to the corners of the bodywork. They also feature Dacia's new four-stacked-squares lighting design.
Oh, and that striking orange colour, Atacama Orange, will also be available.
Underneath, the Duster is basically identical to the old one - the platform remains the same Renault-Nissan B0 chassis (whose lineage stretches all the way back to the 1998 Clio) and the 1.5 dCi diesel engine will carry over. We should get the option of a petrol turbo engine this time around too, and hopefully this will be the Duster that finally offers Irish buyers an automatic option.
The only major physical change is that the windscreen has been moved forward by 100mm, which should give a bit more cabin space. As to how that cabin looks and feels (hopefully a bit of an improvement on the current car) and the full mechanical makeup, we'll just have to wait till we get to Frankfurt.