Christian Esteve, the general manager of carmaker Dacia, yesterday said the prototype for the new 5,000-euro Dacia model had been completed, both in terms of design and functionally speaking. "We will start making the matrixes next and the other components needed for this model to be manufactured at the industrial scale," Christian Esteve stated. The X90 model will be launched on the market in the last quarter of next year and will be followed by two new models derived from it.
The design fell upon the research centre of the French group Renault - Technocentre. "The 5,000-euro Dacia" will be the first model "built from scratch" after Renault bought the main stake in the Romanian carmaker in September 1999. Dacia vice-president Constantin Stroe took a ride with the X90 prototype and says "it's a real car."
"I drove the X90 model (code name for the 5,000-euro Dacia, i.e.) last Wednesday," said Stroe, without volunteering any details on the new model's design. "I can only tell you that, besides X90, I have driven another two models derived from it, which will also be launched on the market. In other words, I drove all the cars that will be launched by Dacia until 2007," Stroe added.
Dacia officials have only confirmed that X90 will be in the small car class. The market has been ripe with speculation in the past two years, regarding the platform for the new Dacia car, but the French neither confirmed nor denied the rumours.
The X90 project will trigger total investments worth more than 350 million euros and will enable the Romanian carmaker to make profit for the first time in the past few years. The 5,000-euro model will be aimed both at the Romanian market but also at other emerging countries such as Turkey, Central and Eastern European states, China, India and some northern countries in South America. Renault officials estimate annual sales for this model to exceed 200,000 units.
Renault also worked to improve the Nova model, which the Pitesti-based carmaker launched at the end of 1995. Thus, Supernova emerged in late 2000, only to be replaced by Solenza this spring.
"Now that the Supernova model has been replaced, we can say it was a big success. It is too soon to be estimating Solenza's success (or lack thereof), but our initial expectations have been exceeded, one month after launch," Stroe concluded.
Dacia's losses exceeded 86 million euros last year, up almost 12% since 2001. However, the company's turnover increased 6.7%, to more than 265 million euros, as almost 57,700 cars were sold. |
