Once again, Dacia saves Renault’s results. It is a well-established return now. The first quarter turnover, published this Friday by the diamond group, confirms that Dacia is in great shape, with a shortage of supplies or not! Sales of the Romanian subsidiary rose again by 5.8% in the first quarter to 127,900 units. At the same time, Renault’s own brand volumes fell by 19.7% to 348,700.
Better: Despite a significant rise in prices, the small Sandero (from 10,790 euros) is still the best-selling car in Europe (to private customers, not counting the fleets of companies and rental companies). A constant since 2017. In France, Dacia has been a leader since 2015, ahead of the Renault Clio, Peugeot 208. And the success of the low-cost brand is undeniable. The label claims to have in front of it an order book equivalent to four months of delivery.
Read on tooWhy, by chance, Dacia is seriously inflating its prices
10 million cars since 1968
Dacia thus celebrates with dignity the premiere this week of the 10,000,000th car from the first 1100 of 1968, an R8 manufactured under license by the then national manufacturer. The brand has also been celebrating its 7,500,000th vehicle since the first Logan appeared in 2004. However, these figures only take into account models marketed with the Dacia logo. They do not take into account the same vehicles (Sandero, Logan, Duster, etc.) sold with the Renault logo, in markets outside Europe and the Mediterranean, mainly in Russia and Latin America.
The Sandero was also the Renault Group’s global sales champion in 2021, with 297,600 units (including 71,000 copies under the Renault brand). The city car overtook the Duster SUV (289,000 units sold in 2021, including 106,300 vehicles under the Renault label outside the Old Continent). The Clio, a real Renault, was only third last year (255,000).
This Sandero owes its success to its price. In France it costs 6,000 euros less than a Renault Clio comparable to the same platform, identical mechanics. It is the cheapest on the French market and one of the most affordable in Europe. Produced mainly in Tangier, Morocco (126,000 last year), but also in Pitesti in Romania (59,500), in Casablanca also in Morocco (60,500), Togliatti in Russia (22,000), Medellin in Colombia (18,000), Córdoba in Argentina (7,800). ), this small SUV is therefore very international. Although the vehicles delivered in Western Europe only come from Romania and Morocco.
Double-digit margins for Dacia
It was the former CEO of Renault, Louis Schweitzer, who had the intuition of these vehicles for emerging countries, materialized by the first Logan produced in Romania. The trap is that these models that allegedly allowed Renault to make its way to Eastern Europe, Russia, Latin America, to strengthen in the Maghreb, also ended up being sold in Western Europe, at the request. Today, France and Italy are Dacia’s two main outlets. Despite its low prices, Renault’s low-cost brand “spits out double-digit margins,” acknowledges Luca De Meo, CEO of Renault.
Renault’s total sales volume fell in the first quarter (-17% to 552,000 units) to its lowest level in thirteen years, due in particular to the shortage of semiconductors and the loss of its second point of sale, Russia, where it suspended its activities due to the war in Ukraine. The diamond group is negotiating the sale of Avtovaz, the first Russian manufacturer to produce the famous Lada, of which it owns 68% of the shares along with Rostec, a holding company that manages the Russian state’s holdings, especially in armaments. . Renault, however, partially offset the decline in unit sales with an increase in average prices, which limited the fall in its turnover to 2.7% (to 9.7 billion euros).