Dacia Duster 130 4x4

Don't dismiss the Duster: just a few miles can reveal it's an unlikely but genuinely fun driver's car

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I SWAPPED OUR M5 TOURING FOR OUR Dacia Duster for a few days this month. I hadn't driven a Duster before and, to be perfectly honest, I didn't think I'd been missing out. Yes, I'd heard all the assertions that this is an evo hero in a most unlikely form, but in my head they couldn't overpower the knowledge that this is also a 128bhp budget SUV.

Then exactly five minutes after setting off in it for the first time, I found myself whipping along an interesting stretch of Broad, hooting with laughter as I maintained as much momentum as I dare through a favourite sequence of corners before picking off two members of the 50mph club (one of them a previous-generation Duster) on the subsequent straight. Hmm. Maybe I was wrong.