You Can Get The Dacia Bigster With A Horse

Mid-sized crossovers aren’t really CT’s sort of car, but we can’t help but like the new Dacia Bigster. Maybe that’s because we’re big fans of Dacia’s mission to combine characterful, rugged looks with simple, no-BS tech and good prices, or maybe it’s because it’s called the Bigster, and that’s a fun word. Bigster!

Anyway, it now transpires that the top version of the Bigster will have Horse power. No, not horsepower, although it’ll obviously have some of that, too – it’s going to have an engine produced by Horse, a new powertrain operation that’s a joint venture between Dacia parent Renault and Chinese manufacturer Geely, which also owns Volvo, Polestar, Lotus, half of Smart and a bit of Aston Martin.

Horse is concentrating on internal combustion and hybrid powertrains, and the top Hybrid 155 version of the Bigster is one of the first cars to utilise one of its engines. That’s a 1.8-litre naturally aspirated four-cylinder producing 107bhp. This, incidentally, is the largest engine ever fitted to a Dacia-badged car, appropriately enough for its biggest-ever SUV.

Teamed with a 50bhp electric motor and an electric starter/generator motor, the system produces a total of 153bhp and 125lb ft of torque, making it the most powerful setup in the Bigster range.

It’s paired up with an automatic gearbox that utilises four ratios for the combustion engine, and two for the electric motor. The Renault Clio Hybrid uses a similar setup, and that results in a fiendishly complicated 14 different ways that power can be channelled to the wheels, but to use, it’s just like a regular automatic.

The upshot is that it’ll apparently be able to run in electric mode up to 80 per cent of the time, and always start up without awakening the petrol engine.

Especially as the demand for full EVs fluctuates, we’re likely to start seeing the Horse name crop up a lot more in the not-too-distant future – although we are getting all this straight from the Horse’s mouth.