Dacia Sandero Stepway LPG Other people gas off
Its keeper is happy but it’s time for second and third opinions
WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT UK doesn’t get new cars with factory-fit LPG tanks. So what are we missing?
THE WEALTH – OR rather the dearth – of LPG motoring has been shared around Autocar HQ in recent weeks, as others begin to discover that the curious Dacia with the Dutch numberplates doesn’t bite.
News editor Rachel Burgess grabbed the keys to see how different a Dacia Sandero is to drive on LPG from one running on petrol.
“What’s most remarkable about the Dacia is how unremarkable it is,” she came back saying. “I was constantly trying to find ways in which it was different to drive from a non-lpg one but never managed it. I expected it to feel heavier (due to the extra fuel tank) and slower (extra weight) but it just felt the same.”
Nic Cackett, former Autocar road tester and now editor of our sister publication Pistonheads (check it out at pistonheads.com), went one further and broke the seal on the hallowed tank of petrol, not used since the Sandero LPG arrived.
“I rather liked the seamless transition to the Stepway’s conventional reserve. It made the potential range seem colossal,” said Nic, “but the eventual requirement for consecutive goes at separate pumps does rather reinsert the strife.”
Back on the subject of pumps, I wrote last time about a bad experience with one of the newer kinds of pump at a Shell I found on the A316 near Autocar’s office. The nozzle struggled to fit onto the car and then the got adaptor stuck on when refuelling was eventually done. I blamed myself.
Well, Rachel had the same problem with the same pump. “It didn’t work,” she said. “My partner and I both persisted for 20min before giving up and heading to another garage.”
Rachel had another observation that tallies with my own: the indicator of how much gas is left in the tank gives about as straight an answer as a politician on Question Time.
“I put in only £10 of fuel to a tank that was almost empty, yet when I got back behind the wheel, it said the LPG tank was full,” she said. “My guess is that the LPG indicator is not an awfully fair measure of how much LPG remains in the tank.”
She’s right on that, but the office consensus on the available range from a tank of LPG is around 200250 miles, depending on how brave you’re feeling when the red light on the little tank indicator comes on.
Last word to Nic, who donned his Autocar road test f lat cap one last
time for his appraisal of the rest of the Sandero’s manners.
“For all the practical limitations presented by our Stepway – the intransigent pumps, the south-paw steering wheel, the airport-car-parkconfounding numberplate – it’s worth reiterating what a happy and contented car the underlying model really is,” he said. “I drove it back from Luton one night – after midnight, after a flight and after very little sleep – and although the steering may be as slow as oak-tree growth, the Dacia’s pulpy, affable ride and squidgy seats make it almost impossible to complain about.”