Styling
The Spring shares its basic structure with the Renault Kwid - a compact crossover that's made in China and sold mostly in developing markets - and you could tell, as the two cars were only mildly differentiated in visual terms. This time around, the Spring gets a look that's much more its own, and which slots in nicely with the likes of the
Jogger and the new Duster.
Up front, you get slim headlights with Dacia's now-signature Y-shaped LED graphic and the rather pleasant looking 'DC' logo grille (which still makes us think of the old 'DMC' DeLorean grille, buy anyway...). The styling is less curvy, and more rectilinear than before, and it looks nicely chunky without trying too hard to be a miniature
Mercedes G-Wagen. Basically, by small cheap car standards, it's pretty handsome.
There are more than a few neat design details which handily double-up as cost saving measures. The lower part of the front bumper and the wheel arch lips are made using a plastic which is dyed in the mould, rather than painted, so that it won't get chipped or scratched so easily. There's space in that bumper (repeated at the rear) for a stick-on graphic; our test car had a distinctive city street map motif, but you can swap that out at a Dacia dealer any time you like, helping to keep the Spring looking fresh as it ages.
Look at the windscreen - there's just the one wiper, which gets a pantograph hinge on the arm so that it can sweep as much of the screen as possible (although it does leave a good bit of the passenger side of the screen untouched) and there's a single matching windscreen washer jet. The wheels - tiny 15-inch items on our Extreme spec test car, but you can get basic 14-inch rims too - have chunky, shiny wheel covers which do a good impression of alloys, and which are surely a better solution for a knockabout city car than actual delicate alloys. You can bounce these off as many kerbs as you like...
Interior
The thoughtful cost savings continue on the inside, although this Spring gets a cabin that's far nicer and more pleasant to sit in than that of the previous model. The plastics are all cheap, of course, but they're styled in a pleasingly chunky fashion both to match the exterior and to keep up with Dacia's stated aim of becoming a cut-price Jeep rival. There's a decent seven-inch digital display behind the wheel (that's standard) which doesn't do much in terms of customisation, but then what did you expect? It works well and that's what counts. Our test car came with the optional ten-inch infotainment system in the centre of the dash, which again is simple, straightforward, and works well enough. Crucially it includes Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity, and there's a pair of USB-C sockets down on the air-conditioning control panel.
That panel uses physical switches, and the buttons for the electric front windows are down there too. It all works well and looks rather smarter than you might expect.
Practicality
The Spring's front seats are on the small side (well, it is a pretty small car overall) and taller drivers such as myself will find that they're a bit wedged up against the door pillar (side impacts don't bear thinking about...) but the driving position, in spite of the steering wheel only adjusting for height, is not bad.
The cabin gets lots of good storage - up to as much as 31-litres dotted about - and there's Dacia's neat 'You-Clip' system that allows you to easily add interior accessories such as cup holders, a lidded bin to complement the standard open storage shelf on the passenger's side, and other things such as a mobile phone holder with a built-in wireless charger.
The boot is a good size too - up slightly from the old model and now measuring 305 litres, aided by an optional 35-litre 'frunk' under the bonnet. You can fold the back seat to open that out to 1,004 litres, but the rear seat back isn't split when folding and there's no hope of a flat load floor.
It's worth remembering too that the rear seat is limited to just two occupants (there are only two seatbelts) and rear legroom is really quite limited, unless the front seat occupants are on the short side.
Performance
I giggled slightly when I read the technical data sheet for the Spring, and noted that the basic 45hp electric motor delivers a 0-62mph time of... 19.1 seconds. There are 1960s classics which can beat that.
Our Extreme-spec test car was fitted with the 65hp motor, the first time that the Spring has been offered with such power. That trims the 0-62mph time to a somewhat more respectable 13.7 seconds. Does that still sound too slow? Well, it's not as bad as you might think.
For a start, the Spring is incredibly light by electric car standards - even with the extra kit of this Extreme version, it weighs just 984kg without a driver on board, so when you accelerate from a standing start, the Spring feels entirely adequately brisk. In fact, on the rural French roads of our test drive, the Spring easily picked itself up to the posted 50mph speed limit without feeling too sluggish. The extra 12mph above that does take a bit of time in fairness, and the Spring is entirely done at 78mph, but in real-world driving conditions it doesn't feel disastrously sluggish or anything.
The upshot of all this slow driving is that the Spring proved exceptionally efficient. Against Dacia's claimed 4.6 miles per kWh economy, we managed to get 5.7mi/kWh out of it, which suggests that you can potentially really stretch that official 140-mile range if you're careful, and if you're mostly driving in town or on slow country roads. Motorway runs? Likely a different story, especially on wet and cold days, but then that's not really what the Spring is designed for.
The Spring comes as standard only with 7kW AC charging, but you can specify a 30kW DC fast charging connection as an option. According to Dacia most owners will charge almost entirely at home as they only cover short hops every day - circa 25 miles or so - and you won't even strictly need a home charger wallbox as the Spring will fully charge from flat in 11 hours from a regular three-pin domestic socket.
As an option, you can also have Vehicle To Load (V2L) charging, which turns the Spring into a mobile power bank. There's an accessory for the charging socket which includes a three-pin domestic connection, allowing you to plug in the likes of an electric grill, or exterior lights, or a coffee maker.
Ride & Handling
With small wheels and relatively soft springs and dampers, you'll be expecting the Spring to roll a good bit when cornering, and this proves entirely accurate. We never quite got to full-on 2CV levels of roll, but we were certainly in the same ballpark. That soft suspension pays dividends in terms of overall ride comfort, but big speed-ramps can have the suspension thumping into its bump-stops if you're a bit too ambitious with your entry speed.
Dacia claims that tweaks to the Spring's steering have made it more dynamic to drive, but this is not a car for precision cornering. In fact, even with those improvements it's incredibly vague to steer, with light steering effort and little sense of feedback.
Does that make the Spring bad to drive? No. You just kind of accept its limits and press on. The tyres - which look almost hilariously narrow when you inspect them - always seem to be on the edge of a loud howl of protest as you corner, and the Spring has to be coaxed and pleaded with to string a series of corners together, but precisely because of that you find that you're enjoying yourself. For a small car designed mostly for city streets, the Spring can be talked into cornering quite briskly, and it's really good fun doing so because you know you're getting it to do things it's not designed for.
Value
Clearly, this is the Spring's trump card. It's not big on range nor on kit, but with a starting price of £14,995 for the basic 45hp Expression on 14-inch wheels, it's cheap by any new car standard, let alone electric car pricing.
For that, you get air conditioning, tinted windows, the digital instrument panel, and more safety kit - automated emergency braking, driver monitoring, rear parking sensors - than you might have thought (don't go expecting a good NCAP rating, though...). You'll have to adjust your own door mirrors though, as well as wind your own rear windows, but neither seems like hardship given the cheap price and the decent electric range.
Verdict
While it might be short on range and is hardly the roomiest thing around, it's very hard not to be charmed by the Dacia Spring. It can be coaxed into a little driving fun, it's exceptionally efficient if driven in the right way, and it's just the right side of practical enough. Plus it's almost alarmingly cheap to buy. It seems to be just enough car to do the job, and no more.
