1986 Dacia 500 review from Romania

Nothing major. At one point the windscreen wipers refused to work. The radiator had also leaked.

He interior is probably the worst thing. It's really cramped and of very bad quality, and everything falls off or apart. The passenger window didn't open, and there were rips all over the place, which are happily now mended.

The Dacia 500 is also called Lastun. It was the first car designed and built in Romania. The body is made all out of glassfibre, which is really good as the body doesn't rust (it leaks, falls apart, but at least it doesn't rust!).

In Romania this car is a total joke. Its tiny space, the poor performance (top speed over 100 km/h is listed, but mine doesn't go past 80), and the glassfibre body have given rise to incredibly many jokes - I suppose that the British equivalent is the Robin Reliant!

The car is certainly not attractive on the outside - the styling is early eighties and looks as if it were designed in the lunch hour (knowing Communist bosses, it probably was!), and the crudity of design is apparent on the inside as well with a very poor finish where everything falls off.

In Romania there are extremely few of them on the roads, so parts are not the easiest thing to get. Probably nobody wants to be seen (or can fit) behind the wheel of such a joke car. However, for the forty dollars I paid for it, it goes and that's the main thing.

And the best thing? The economy. This car does about 3.5 litres to 100 km; I think that's about 80 m.p.g., which makes it really cheap to run, and an ideal little car for use in the city. So - it's not all bad!

But I don't use it very much except for going around my town - you can't really take it out on the big roads, and the engine often has minor faults which leave you stranded.

Overall,

It's terribly designed,

terribly built,

with terrible performance,

terrible space,

amazing economy,

and cheap transport.

So I suppose it's better than walking.