CarBrandLogos archive · Dacia · 1968

Dacia1100

Romania's first mass-produced car was a Renault 8 built under licence at Pitești.

Photo: Klexy from de.wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in Dacia history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Dacia 1100, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Nicolae Ceausescu driving the first Dacia car

Origins

Automobile Dacia was established in 1966 as a Romanian state enterprise, with a factory at Pitești and a licensing agreement with Renault, chosen after Nicolae Ceaușescu's government rejected offers from Fiat, Peugeot and Austin. The first product, from August 1968, was the Dacia 1100 — a Renault 8 assembled from a mixture of imported and locally made parts.

Nicolae Ceausescu driving the first Dacia car · not credited · Attribution

Design and engineering

It was a small rear-engined four-door saloon with an 1,108cc engine and a four-speed gearbox, and around 37,500 were built before it was withdrawn in 1971. Almost all went to state institutions, party officials and the small number of Romanians permitted to own a car privately.

In production

It was superseded by the larger Dacia 1300, based on the Renault 12, which was the car Ceaușescu had actually wanted and which would define Romanian motoring for the next thirty years. The 1100 survives mainly as a footnote — the moment Romania began building cars at all.

At a glance