At the end of the 1960’s the communist regime decided it needed a car of the people and for the people. So it acquired the rights and basic designs for a Renault 12 and set up a factory in Pitesti, about 120km from Bucharest. Known as the Dacia (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈdat͡ʃi.a]) (also the name for the pre-roman province bordered by the Danube) the car was to be an important part of the Romanian life until the revolution. Taken over by Renault after 1990, it has gone on to conquer the world of affordable vehicles with little frills.

 Beginnings of Dacia

Although it started with a Renault design, by 1969 the most common model had been launched with a new design, called Dacia 1300. With many more models coming out, the 1300 and 1310 remained the most common car you could see on the roads of Romania back then.

The party propaganda showed long documentaries of the factory where the car was produced, such as the one below which was filmed in the 1980’s.

Getting a car in Communism

Most Romanians dreamed of having a car, a Dacia, but besides the price (about 4,000 USD) the problem were the long waiting lists. You had to register for a car and sometimes had to wait 5 years before receiving the call: You can come and pick up your car!

What you got was certainly non-negotiable. You could not even pick the color of your vehicle, let alone the features. Everybody got the same color if they purchased the car that month, and everybody got exactly the same features, unless you were with the communist party and got such luxury as heated rear windows to defrost faster.

Photo source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Orlovic

A little over 2 million copies of the 1300 and 1310 have been sold, more than all the other models combined, including the modern ones built after the revolution. It was the one and only car that every Romanian has at some point used to travel from A to B.

Driving the Dacia around

You might think: Hey, I have a car, now I can go everywhere I want!

Wrong! Once you had the car you still had problems getting around. Yes, gas was cheap (about .56$ a liter) but there was none to be found most of the time. So your car would just be sitting there on an empty tank, waiting for the fuel to arrive.

Let’s assume you had fuel and it’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon, perfect for a picnic. You still could not drive unless your car had the right license plates. In the 1980s on Sundays only cars with either odd or even registration numbers could drive, but never both. So if this Sunday was an odd one, next one was an even one. Which meant you really needed to plan your vacation so as not to drive on the wrong day.

Despite all these problems Romanians still loved the car, and for some it was a favorite pastime to spend hours on end tinkering with the engine, greasing the doors, cleaning the car and just overall taking care of it. The cars had names and were regarded pretty much as members of the family, especially since it was very unlikely that you would be getting another one in your lifetime. So you had to take care of the Dacia you had, even though you did not pick out the color, even though the doors did not close properly and it had no cassette player. It was the only one you would get!