New Dacia C-Neo estate could be the ultimate family car

Dacia’s push into the family car market steps up a gear in 2026 with a bargain-priced, rugged estate. Referred to internally as the Dacia C-Neo, the five-door wagon will slide into the range alongside the Bigster SUV and seven-seat Jogger.

Prototypes are already out testing, revealing the beefy proportions. A long rear overhang will free up plenty of boot space: expect around 600 litres. The rear seats will fold to ensure this is the perfect vehicle for trips to IKEA, supplemented by that Dacia essential: roof bars.

Nonetheless, the Dacia C-Neo is far from a utilitarian tank: the arcing roof and slanted rear hatch give it a very different profile to the Jogger’s rigidly straight lines. The wheelbase appears similar to the 2.7m-long Bigster’s, and the two vehicles will likely share a footprint around 4.5 metres long.

Expected to go public in spring 2026 with UK sales following in the autumn, the C-Neo will stay true to Dacia’s tried-and-trusted blueprint of offering excellent value for money, space and hybrid power. Expect the car to cost from around £20,000, which would comfortably undercut its closest rival, the £26k SEAT Leon.

If you can't wait for the new Dacia C-Neo to arrive, there are plenty of other Dacia models available through our Buy a Car service. You can get your hands on a new Dacia Bigster for as little as £24,000, or a new Dacia Jogger for just over £18,000.

What will the Dacia C-Neo look like?

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Our exclusive images capture the C-Neo’s mix of sleek profile but robust body: plastic paint protection is a given. And the surfaces will double down on Dacia’s design philosophy, which was outlined to Auto Express by vice-president of design David Durand.

“We try to express our car’s robustness in our formal language. That means clean surfaces, and nice intersections of big blocks that are very pure and simple,” he explained.

Under the C-Neo is Dacia’s CMF-B architecture, capable of supporting front and four-wheel drive. This platform unlocks real economies of scale baked in by Dacia’s ‘designed-to-cost’ philosophy.

“We’ve been [doing this] for 20 years or more,” product chief Patrice Lévy-Bencheton told us. “When you do essential cars, you make sure that all the features, the parts you are designing and so on, are the most efficient in terms of the cost-to-value ratio.”

Minimising weight is critical, because it means the car’s engines can be smaller, as can the brakes, triggering a virtuous circle of cheaper components. One of Lévy-Bencheton’s favourite cost and weight savings is having one strut for the powered tailgate, rather than two. That’s nailed on for this wagon.

Another breakthrough could see weight eliminated from the seats, if Dacia can turn the thinking seen on the Hipster concept, where sections were replaced with elasticated mesh, into production reality.

All this feeds into Dacia’s laser focus on price. “Offering affordability, whatever the size, whatever the [customer] need, that’s Dacia’s mission,” said Frank Marotte, vice-president of sales and marketing.

“In the family car segment, we see a vast number of customers who are stuck with existing vehicles because they cannot afford to renew. And what we see with Bigster is that we fit a gap where nobody else is, with a car that is roughly 10,000 Euros [£8,800] less expensive than [rivals].”

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Marotte added that Dacia has been closely studying the mid-size car market, known as the C-segment, to find untapped demand. “If we come with something different in the C-hatch or the C-wagon, if it fits a need that has been created by other manufacturers moving away from customers, then we have to be there.”

It’s all part of a long-term goal for Dacia to sell one million vehicles a year, a huge jump over last year’s 676,340 volume. The target is for 20 per cent of sales to come from the C-segment, with higher prices boosting  revenues. “We’re sticking to the objective to grow,” CEO Katrin Adt told Auto Express. “We’re bringing new cars in the C-segment but also in the A-segment, trying to broaden our offer.”

What will power the Dacia C-Neo?

Dacia has built up a 50,000-strong order bank for the Bigster SUV, and next year will also yield the successor to the Spring electric car in the A-segment (city cars). Don’t expect the C-Neo to get pure electric power, although Adt confirmed that “on every car there will be hybrid”.

Dacia has re-engineered its hybrid system for the Bigster and next year’s facelifted Jogger, to boost efficiency and performance. Out goes the 1.6-litre four-cylinder for a less-stressed 1.8-litre, again running the efficient Atkinson cycle. The hybrid system is fed by a bigger, 1.4kWh battery and includes two motors, one powering the wheels during 80 per cent of urban driving, Dacia reckons. The other is a starter/generator. Power is sent to the front wheels via an automatic transmission.

Expect around 150bhp in total: the Hybrid 155 system’s e-motor produces 49bhp in the facelifted Jogger, boosted by 109bhp from the 1.8-litre. Peak torque is 205Nm in the Bigster, 170Nm in the revised Jogger.

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Hybrid won’t be the only powertrain option: the 1.2-litre TCe, a three-cylinder turbo engine with 48-volt mild-hybrid assistance, is sure to be offered. In the Bigster it produces 138bhp, or 128bhp coupled with four-wheel drive and the TCe’s six-speed manual transmission.

Dacia C-Neo interior and safety tech

The C-Neo’s cockpit will have much in common with both the Bigster and Jogger to keep costs down. That means the same basic dashboard layout, common steering wheel and controls, plus a 10-inch central touchscreen. Dacia’s YouClip system will enable occupants to mount their phones and other accessories around the cabin. It’ll be a spacious five-seater: take a Jogger if you need to transport seven.

Driver-assistance features will include automated emergency braking, lane-keep assist, cruise control and driver-fatigue monitoring.

Dacia C-Neo hatchback to follow in 2027

The C-Neo is a welcome prospect for value-seeking customers who would prefer a spacious estate to an SUV – and sales chief Marotte is convinced there’s plenty of demand. He stated: “For years we thought that SUV would take over the majority of the market. But SUVs have weaknesses, and some customers think that driving an SUV is not as pleasant as a hatch or a wagon.

So can we find some propositions which are a better balance between driveability, efficiency and good space.” It’s likely that another C-segment car – a shorter, more conventional hatchback to take on the Volkswagen Golf at a lower price – will follow in 2027.

“A hatchback is a very European body type, right? It fits needs in terms of access and practicality, [and they’re] judged much better by European customers than sedans, for example,” continued Marotte. “But we need to figure out with a lot of pragmatism, which are the best [bodystyle] propositions with the best balance between everything we need to do: designed-to-cost, designed-to-weight, CO2, efficiency, possible electrification, space for batteries. We need to find all this.”

A big brother to the Sandero supermini would also help achieve the one-million sales ambition. “Dacia will not remain with the six models we have [already] announced. Let’s see what happens,” concluded Adt.

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