Thousands of Bucharesters attend Dacia 50th anniversary events

Thousands of people attended on Sunday events organised in Herastrau Park in Bucharest to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Dacia automobile.

Car enthusiasts could watch automobiles produced in the last five decades at the Mioveni plant displayed in Piata Charles de Gaulle. The dozen models then participated in a parade between Piata Charles de Gaulle and Arcul de Triumf.

Also available for the participants were specially designated areas for recreation and playing sports.

According to the timetable unveiled by the organisers, the day ended with a concert staged by Smiley and fireworks.

"The future of Dacia is already very promising ... (...) A very important transformation has been achieved in the last 50 years, from the first models to what Dacia brand is today. It used to be a local enterprise, now it is a global one, which integrates all the components of the automotive industry, and in the future it will be an enterprise that will have an increasingly more important role to play in the development of our entire ‘global access' range. So we see how Dacia is developing, and this is important to Romania to Dacia and to the entire ‘global access' range," General Manager of Groupe Renault Romania Antoine Doucerain told AGERPRES.

He eschewed confirming media accounts that the release of a new generation of the Sandero model is set for 2019 after the success of the new Duster this year.

"All of our products are very successful. Year 2018 is the year when we launch a new Duster, a successful launch, and next year will undoubtedly be another successful year for Duster," said Doucerain.

The Mioveni plant celebrated on August 20 half a century since the production of the first Dacia automobile, with the production of the Romanian car manufacturer exceeding 6 million units to date.

According to a Dacia press release, on August 20, 1968, the Pitesti Automobile Factory (UAP) was inaugurated. The first car to leave the plant was named Dacia 1100 and it was a vehicle produced under a Renault R8 license. A year later, Dacia 1300 was introduced, which was to be the basic model of the make for almost three decades.

Made in many variants (sedan, estate, pick-up truck and even a two-door sports version), the Dacia has gone down in collective memory as "the car that has put Romania on wheels."

According to the company's data, Dacia was established in the late 1960s under a collaboration agreement between Romania and Renault.

"Dacia returned to its roots in 1999 with the acquisition of the trademark and the Mioveni plant by the French group. Dacia is today the largest company in Romania, with a significant contribution to the Gross Domestic Product and to the country's exports and with a structuring part in the economy through a vast network of suppliers. Over the past five decades, more than 6 million cars have been manufactured at Mioveni."

In the first year of operation, 2,030 vehicles were assembled at the Mioveni plant.

Currently, over 90 percent of the manufactured cars are exported, with models such as Sandero and Duster topping sales charts in the most demanding European markets.

Part of France's Renault Groupe, Dacia is a dynamic brand in 2018, leading the Romanian market and expanding internationally. The industrial platform at Mioveni now has 14,000 employees, who enjoy modern working conditions at a European level.

Dacia manufactures in Romania almost 350,000 cars a year, plus over 500,000 engines and more than 500,000 gearboxes, of which a significant part is exported through the Dacia Logistics Department and the Alliance International Logistic Network (AILN), the largest logistics centre of the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance. Engineering is carried out at the highest international standards at Renault Technologie Roumanie, the engineering centre, as well as at the Titu Technical Centre inaugurated in 2009.

The Dacia range, which in 1968 had a single model, currently comprises seven models, three of which (Lodgy, Dokker and Dokker Van) have been manufactures at the Groupe Renault plant in Tanger, Morocco, since 2012.

Currenlty, Dacia is the largest company operating in Romania, with a turnover of more than 5 billion euros in 2017. The car manufacturer's market share is about 30 percent of the sales of new vehicles.

Dacia models are sold in 44 countries, on four continents, with France, Germany and Italy being their main three export destinations. AGERPRES (RO - author: George Onea, editor: Florin Marin; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)