DACIA GUNS FOR OCTAVIA WITH UPSIZED ESTATE

Rugged, Bigster-based wagon will arrive next year priced at less than £25,000

- FELIX PAGE

Dacia will go after the Skoda Octavia next year with a new rugged estate model that's petrol-powered, off-road ready and priced at less than £25,000.

Due for launch in the coming months, the new model will play a crucial part in Dacia's expansion into Europe's most popular car market, the C-segment - which already accounts for a fifth of the firm's sales, following the introduction of the Bigster SUV this year. A third C-segment model will arrive around a year later.

Dacia’s new CEO, Katrin Adt, told Autocar that the success of the Bigster has inspired confidence within the company that the brand can continue to expand within the highly competitive C-segment.

In order for this expansion to be successful, though, Adt said: “You need to watch out that every car has its own place in the segment - its own purpose - and you can be pretty sure that this will be a totally different offer to the customer than the Bigster.”

Indeed, a leaked photo of what appears to be a late-stage prototype for the new model - codenamed C-Neo - shows that it will look effectively like a stretched and lifted Sandero, taking the form of a high-riding compact estate car that is expected to be around 4.6m long.