THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX
Dacia’s product-development gurus demonstrate the Sleep Pack
IT’S just a box. But then, suddenly, it isn’t. There is no escaping the fact that upon first inspection, the latest addition to Dacia’s range of accessories looks like the sort of robust workshop bench where you might chuck tools at the end of a day’s labouring. There’s a neat integration of the brand’s new logo, admittedly, but the thing is even made out of wood.
However, then Dacia’s reps begin to open it up. A latch here, a hinge there; a couple of slats are inserted, various wooden panels are extended and in less than 90 seconds the box has expanded to become a frame that can support an adult-sized mattress. It’s called the Sleep Pack and, true to form, it looks like it does exactly what it says on the tin.
A bed is not, on the face of it, the sort of development that you might automatically expect from Dacia – a brand focused on value and the bare essentials. Except the company has also discovered over the years that its customers like to ‘do stuff’.
So when the Jogger entered development, and its roomy dimensions became apparent, Dacia’s product-development gurus started thinking of ways in which it might enhance its owners’ lifestyles. Frippery and toys en route? Nope. Something which actually empowers you to get more out of wherever you’ve travelled to? Bingo. This is a company whose motto is transitioning to ‘Good thinking’, after all.
We’ve come to an ice-cold barn on the outskirts of Versailles to be given a rare, behind-the-scenes insight into how this sort of inventiveness translates from a line on an internal Powerpoint presentation to a functioning camp bed that is now being industrialised. However, François Aupierre, Dacia’s accessories manager, and Pauline Doublet from Qstomize, the in-house engineering division responsible for it, try to manage our expectations as they prepare to pull a black fabric cover off a shape in the corner of the room. “You have to understand that this has never been seen before,” they say, warily. “It’s the first ever prototype.”
That may be, but what they reveal is also an engineering work of art – slabs of wood, cut and jointed together to make a box that can, through some clever hinge work, expand into a support for a full-sized bed, and/or fold forwards to be a table, all the while offering storage space. Rough and ready it may be, but as a proof of concept, it is glorious.
“The Dacia bosses were a bit suspicious when we first showed them,” François says. “But once we opened it out, Denis le Vot [the firm’s CEO] lay down on the bed straight away.”
The unit is, we’re told, the work of one man, Eric Bouffette, who was given a brief within Qstomize (the division which normally adapts Renault Group products for the French postal service, driving schools and the like) and shown a Jogger, so he could work out the parameters. A few fag-packet calculations later, he started bolting panels together to come up with an extremely clever solution that