Something different today! Like many Eastern Bloc cars, the Dacia 1300 had an unnaturally long life. Changing economic and political circumstances, and some clever updating and modifying, meant that what began as a licensed 1969 Renault R12 morphed into a line of coupes, sedans, hatches, wagons and pickups (single and crew cab!) that lasted until 2006, with more than 2.3 million units built.

In the spring of 2023 we attended what was probably the largest-ever U.S. gathering of Dacias at the Carlisle Import Show, which is where most of the images in this story came from. Most Americans have probably never heard of Dacia, but it’s been Romania’s primary car company since the 1960s and is hugely successful in other parts of the world today. It’s been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Renault since 1999 and its roots, obviously, grow from Renault. But there was a long period when it was on its own.

One of the rarest cars in attendance at Carlisle in 2023 was this 1300, the very first iteration of this long-running machine and certainly the best choice to talk about Dacia’s early days. (Other Dacia stories are in the works!)

Romania and Renault

Though Ford assembled a few cars in Bucharest in the 1930s and IMS (the company that eventually became ARO — Automobil Românesc) began producing trucks and vans in 1957, Romania did not have a large-scale automotive industry until the late 1960s. But it certainly wanted one. Even though it was a founding member of the Soviet-led Comecon trade block in 1949, Romanian officials were often dissatisfied with the role the country was assigned in that group, providing oil, raw materials, and agricultural exports to other countries.

Fundamentally, in an undeveloped country, building industry puts people to work and creates a more sophisticated economy. Romania began a large-scale industrialization program in the 1950s, eventually achieving more independence from Soviet influence. First Secretary Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej also realized that actively courting Western companies for help would cause standards of living to rise faster than trying to build industry entirely in-country and that Western politicians were eager to cater to Romania in hopes of luring it away from the Soviet sphere.

Gheorghiu-Dej died in 1965 and was succeeded by Nicolae Ceaușescu, who seemed like even more of a maverick, openly criticizing the Soviet crackdown on the Prague Spring in 1968 and inking deals with Citroën, Renault, and British Aircraft Corporation (BAC, who licensed the BAC-111 airliner to the country for local production) for industrial cooperation. The deal with Renault was probably the most important, and it yielded the most immediate result.

On land once used by aircraft and railway facilities, Renault helped Dacia construct a factory at Mioveni (then called Colibași) near Pitești, about 60 miles northwest of Bucharest in the foothills of the Southern Carpathian mountains. Renault and the Romanian state agreed to license the then-forthcoming Renault 12 for local production, but until it was ready, complete knock-down (CKD) R8s were built as a testbed for the new factory. Ultimately, Dacia produced about 40,000 R8s of its own into 1972.

The Birth of the Dacia 1300

In August of 1969, after the R12 had debuted in France, the Mioveni line was tooled up for the locally-built 12, which became the Dacia 1300, powered by the 51-hp 1289-cc Cléon-Fonte engine. Apart from the badge, it was much the same as the French car. Indeed, you can hardly tell that this blue car isn’t a Renault. Even the three-bolt wheels are the same, and the badges are the only real clues.

But the project’s purpose wasn’t to create a unique Dacia, at least not at first. Romania had constructed its own steel mills in the 1950s and could produce most of the major components itself, but a car is made of thousands of parts requiring many suppliers, and this Romania did not have at that time. Early on, many components were shipped from France to create a local supply chain over time. The plan was remarkably successful in this regard.

By 1976, almost all of the Dacia 1300’s parts were made in Romania, and the lineup had been expanded to include the wagon variant of the R12, which was also built as a van, and the “luxury” 1301, a 55-horse version similar to the R12 TS that was reserved for Communist Party officials.

The 1300 was a car for Romania and Comecon countries, as Renault forbade the Romanians from widely exporting it, while the R12 was still a new vehicle on sale from its own dealers. This arrangement ended when Renault introduced the R18 in 1978, and the agreement with Renault lapsed the following year. Very quickly, the Dacia 1300 was updated into the 1310, a major facelift and expansion of the lineup, and the company began exporting as many cars as possible.

Ceaușescu’s Chaos and Renault’s Rescue

The goal of creating a situation where Dacia could build cars on its own was achieved, but not all was well in Romania, as the Ceaușescu regime soon became extremely repressive (much as Gheorghiu-Dej’s era had been) and made many terrible, capricious decisions regarding its oil ventures (Romania is one of the few European nations to have on-land oil reserves) and its domestic economic plans.

Economic mismanagement and social repression mounted, and damage from the 1977 Vrancea earthquake, which caused huge damage to 23 of Romania’s 40 counties, sent the country into an economic tailspin that was not helped by dependence on foreign credit. By 1982, the country was in default.

One way to fix this was to export as much industrial and raw material as possible, so once Renault was out of the picture, Dacia 1310s were aggressively exported, including to Canada, to bring in hard currency, just like Skodas and Polski-Fiats in the 1980s. The company also cooked up many additional body styles based on the original shell, up to and including pickups, though the story of the “Papuc” (Romanian for “Slipper” and a reference to the pickup’s shape) is one for another day.

They weren’t bad cars, either, though the R12 design was quite dated by the mid-1980s. The later Dacias are another story, however. Suffice it to say that while they often received criticism from Western media, just like rear-engine Skodas and Yugos, they were pretty tough cars. Dacia itself was seen as a very successful company, too, which led to Renault’s post-communist involvement and purchase. Today, Dacia is Renault’s most successful business unit.

The original Dacia 1300 is fairly rare now since it wasn’t widely exported and is the oldest car in this long-running line. It’s also never been a particularly expensive vehicle, and like many old Eastern Bloc workhorses, many were thrown away in the 1990s when they wore out or got rusty.

Surprisingly, there seems to be a big group of Dacia fans in the U.S. (our friends at Wheels for Reels have imported many of them), primarily but certainly not entirely Romanian expats. It was a treat to see so many Romanian cars gathered in one place (including AROs and Oltcits) last year, and here’s a panorama of that scene: