Dacia Spring driven: Britain's cheapest car grows up thanks to Twingo underpinnings

Leg room has seen a more modest growth, from 64cm to 68cm, because Dacia positioned the individual rear seats in a way that prioritises boot capacity. These two seats do not slide back and forth as they do in the Twingo, but the engineers reckon there’s no need, given that the Spring has a longer rear overhang to make the boot bigger anyway. Load space there is now up to 337 litres including the underfloor storage. There’s also an 18-litre frunk for charging cables.

The battery uses lithium-iron-phosphate chemistry and has a net capacity of 27.5 kWh. The promised 155-mile WLTP range – which is 14 more than the previous Spring – falls short by eight miles compared with the Twingo due to a bigger body that weighs 13kg more and a less favourable drag coefficient of 0.318 (the Twingo's is 0.295). All Springs coming to the UK will be able to charge at 11kW domestically and 50kW publicly.

If you pick the more expensive trim, you start the Spring with a button, while the lowlier version still gets an ignition key. The first part of our test drive went through urban areas and more open roads where the Spring’s modest 80bhp and 203 lb ft are more than sufficient to keep up with traffic.

In this environment the turning circle of less than 10 metres makes the car extremely agile. The standard rear parking sensors and electric parking brake also come in handy around town. 

The new Renault platform includes the ‘one-box’ brake-by-wire system, which gives the Spring the sort of prompt and linear pedal response that’s not always a given even in cars three times the price. There’s not much in the way of configuration for the off-throttle regen, though. The column-mounted drive selector lets you switch between D and a stronger B-mode, but even the latter doesn’t offer full one-pedal driving.

Even on motorways, the Spring is a world away from its predecessor, which felt underpowered and out of its depth. This is still not its natural habitat, but it is nonetheless happy to cruise at its 80mph limiter if you wish.

The weather on the Portuguese launch was so bad that the normal UK rotation was cancelled, but the Spring handled the very wet and windy conditions well enough. Now shod with Goodyear tyres instead of the dreadful LingLongs found on the old car, the Spring can take advantage of its wider stance to offer adequate grip and good stability – two concepts that are completely alien to the old Spring.

Superficially, this car feels similar to the Twingo, but one difference is in the steering. It’s much slower on the Dacia, at more than three turns between locks, and this gives a more relaxed demeanour – which suits it.