I drove the £18k petrol & £22k hybrid Dacia Joggers – both look the same and have 7 seats but which car is better?

I’m pretty sure a Dacia Jogger will win this duel, but which one? let’s find out

The orange car is a regular petrol jogger that costs £18,000 or £8 a day. The gray car is a petrol-electric Jogger hybrid that costs £22,000, or £11 a day.

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Both look the same.

Both have seven seats.

Both carry the same amount of stuff.

Which is unusual. The trunk is usually smaller in a hybrid to accommodate the battery technology.

Here you only lose the spare wheel underneath.

Both are truly versatile, with more than 60 seating configurations and roof racks that rotate 90 degrees across the width of the vehicle.

Remove the rear seats, tip the middle row forward and you essentially have a two meter long van.

We like that.

Now we come to the crucial part of this head-to-head race. Engines.

The 1.3 petrol is a solid Renault engine capable of up to 48mpg. Six-speed manual only.

I will say that 110hp is a bit of a weed in a seven seater, especially when it’s full and you live at the top of a hill.

But keep the right gear and you’ll be fine.

The hybrid puts out 140 hp, adds another 8 MPG to 56 MPG and starts off smoothly and quietly like an electric car.

The battery is charged on the go.

It’s the same 1.6-litre hybrid that you’ll find in the latest Renault Captur. Automatic transmission only, which seems to be what many Dacia buyers are asking for.

So easy winner. Hybrid all day? Not really. I don’t think it’s worth the extra £4,150, £82 a month, for the hybrid.

And here’s why. We averaged 50mpg over 130 miles on a mix of city, country and highway driving. So not 56mpg.

The extra 180 kg of weight doesn’t help. We all run better with less wood, don’t we?

But beyond that, hybrid and automatic transmissions don’t go well together.

It’s like the gearbox has a mind of its own, randomly shifting gears up and down when you’ve stopped asking.

It just lacked consistency. Climbing a hill, it panted like a couch-to-5k jogger.

On the level, it was lazy to respond to the right foot.

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Still, trudging through town was a breeze. That’s where this car was happiest.

Other observations?

The shifter does not match the markings very well. You think you’re in drive when you’re actually in neutral. And you think you’re in reverse when you’re in the park.

Also, the picnic tables in the back seats (that goes for all joggers) are kind of pointless. You can’t pull them up when you’re sitting on the seats because your legs are in the way. But you can’t get into the seats when they’re already up.

positive?

We like the phone mount positioned high next to the driver’s cab. We like the new DC emblem on the nose.

Above all, we like Dacia for offering us decent family transport at rock-bottom prices.

You don’t look like you’re wearing hi-tech when everyone else is wearing Nike.