Dacia Bigster
Published · Researched 2026-09-21
Dacia Bigster Hybrid 155 (2025–2026) — honest review
Voice: straight-talking forum veteran; unusually cautious this time, because the car is a year old and anyone pretending to know its long-term reliability is lying.
The Dacia Bigster is the cheapest way into a proper C-segment family SUV — Qashqai-sized space for supermini money. From £24,995 in the UK (TCe 140) or €29,990 in France (Hybrid 155), you get 677 litres of boot, a panoramic roof on the Extreme, and a hybrid that does 45+ mpg in real driving. That is a genuinely absurd amount of car for the money, and nothing I say below changes that.
What it's like: big, comfortable, honest. The driving position is commanding, visibility is excellent, the seats are soft, and around town the Hybrid 155 glides on electric power up to 40 mph in near silence. carmagazine's long-termer — a Journey Hybrid at £30,390 — reports over 45 mpg without trying, and calls the powertrain smooth. The Extreme trim's washable microfibre upholstery and rubber mats are the kind of details that show Dacia actually understands family life. For the school-run-to-motorway grind, the fundamentals are right.
What's actually wrong: calibration, not concept. The 10.1-inch infotainment is sluggish — "several seconds passed between us prodding the screen and it responding." The hybrid's brakes are badly modulated: the handover from regenerative to friction braking means "the pads slam into the discs like a blacksmith's hammer on an anvil" halfway down the pedal — the Qashqai and Tucson are far more predictable. The steering has "way too much power assistance" with no progressive weight, and when you floor it the 4+2 gearbox's enormous ratio gaps make the engine "scream like a kookaburra" on motorway slip roads. Materials are frankly cheap, and lumbar adjustment is reserved for the pricier trims. None of this is fatal; all of it is the price of the price.
The unknowns, stated plainly: the Hybrid 155's 1.8 "Horse" engine is new to Renault Group — about a year in production — and Romanian press already notes early customer grumbles and questions whether it's at "the reliability level of the old Nissan 1.6." The E-Tech multimode gearbox has a 155,825-unit Renault recall in its family history (subassembly failures, immobilised cars) — that's the gearbox's past, not a confirmed Bigster fault, but it's the thing to watch on owner forums. One UK owner on daciaforum reports their new Journey's engine "hunts erratically or revs uncontrollably" at junctions. One report is not a pattern. Skip it if you need a proven reliability record, if you want a seven-seater (there isn't one), or if you do lots of hard motorway work — the hybrid's thrash under load and the TCe 140's modest output will grate.
The social pulse: PistonHeads is split exactly as you'd expect — "It's ugly, not that cheap, it's slow and actually a bit meh. Not for me!" versus actual intenders: "It isn't ugly, it is fairly cheap for a new car, it's fast enough for what it is and it's anything but meh." Auto Express "struggled to find fault with it." The German owner on TikTok loves the car, hates the dealer paperwork. YouTube is drowning in engagement-bait regret videos — ignore them.
Value call: the hybrid is the one to buy — the TCe 140 is the price-leader, but the Hybrid 155's economy and refinement justify the premium, and the whole range stays under £30k / €32k. There is no sweet-spot year yet; there is one model year. Buy new or nearly-new on warranty, and if you're risk-averse, the 4x4 TCe 130 with its simple manual gearbox is the lowest-tech, lowest-risk option. Cross-shop the Renault Symbioz (same hybrid, better finished), the MG ZS Hybrid+ (cheaper, Chinese, worse dealer network), and the Nissan Qashqai e-Power (nicer, £5k+ more).
The honest tradeoff: maximum space per pound, with first-year calibration rough edges and a new engine whose diary is still being written. A rational buy on warranty — just don't mistake "cheap" for "proven."