Dacia Jogger Hybrid review: a brilliant budget car, but there’s a catch

And because the extra two seats in the boot are also light, removing them is a doddle, allowing you to run the Jogger as a five-seater with a huge load area. What’s more, because the CMF-B platform on which it is based was always designed with hybridization in mind, there’s no penalty in terms of load space compared with the standard car. 

So configured, though, you’ll need to beware the mounting points for the seats, which aren’t covered up, and will therefore snag your luggage as you slide it in. And because they aren’t shrouded, they provide excellent wells into the car’s metalwork, down which inevitably will disappear leaves and twigs from the gardening you need to take to the tip. 

Must we talk about the driving experience? After all, most Jogger buyers won’t give a fig. But yes, we must, because actually the Hybrid has advantages over the purely petrol version that make it the pick of the range. 

Gone, for example, is the on-off boost of the petrol turbo, as well as its baggy, imprecise gearshift and vague clutch action. These are replaced by a powertrain that gives instant pull from a standstill and seamless acceleration, and while the Hybrid’s 1.6-litre petrol four cylinder engine isn’t the quietest thing in the world, it’s still smoother and less vocal than the three-cylinder in the cheaper, 1.2 petrol Jogger. 

Box of tricks

Very occasionally, you remember you’re in a car with a complicated gearbox; it happens when you realise the revs, for example, are riding high for no apparent reason, or when you detect a faint surge as the electronics shuffle power around under acceleration. Most of the time, though, you’d be hard-pushed to tell.

The ride is firmer here than in the petrol car, too. Like all Dacias, the Jogger is a little jiggly round the edges, offering enough compliance to damp out smaller bumps but clanging in a slightly dim-witted way over bigger ones; the Hybrid’s greater weight emphasises these jolts, and because the body weight isn’t that well controlled, you get a more unsettled feel over churned-up patches of Tarmac. It’s not something you can’t live with, but it is something that never entirely goes away.

And, as you’d expect, the Jogger is no ball of fire on a back road. It’s more entertaining than you’d expect, mind you. The steering, while over-assisted and entirely devoid of feel, is actually quite accurate, and there’s a decent amount of grip and not too much slop in the body movement. You won’t be tackling tight technical corners with glee, but the Jogger does flow easily from bend to bend in quite a satisfying way.