Remember how Dacia suddenly experienced a sales boom during what was an economic slow down? Well it seems as the good times get bet better they actually get worse for cheap budget brands like Dacia. The Romanian auto company is actually owned by Renault. Dacia offer SUV’s for supermini money and superminis for the price of a bag of chips. Renault revived Dacia’s fortunes by marketing really cheap cars to people who don’t want to spend a fortune on a new vehicle. This simple formula worked for a while until people began to realise that Dacias, whether in supermini or SUV form, were actually rather crap. And we’re talking serious crap to rival non-other, anyone who has ever driven a Dacia will quickly realise its an exercise in pure crappiness. But when you launch a marketing campaign which basically says you can get a lot of car for very little money then you have the buying public hooked. The problem is the consumer soon finds out that the marketing campaigns were nothing more than myth generation. That said Dacia still feels the need to increase it’s marketing spend in order boost the awareness and profile of the brand. Dacia’s market share declined in Europe during 2015 causing sales to stall due to an ageing model line-up and a lack of investment into new product development. The best selling car Dacia make is the Duster but that isn’t scheduled for replacement until 2017. As consumer confidence returns people are starting to move up the buying scale to something that is better than what Dacia offers right now. In the short term the company responded by offering the Duster SUV, Logan MPV and Sandero with higher spec derivatives but this has done little to halt the sales decline. According to market analysis sales of the Dacia Duster fell by 1.8 percent to 125,000 units. With a new CEO scheduled to arrive by April Dacia will have to undertake a new product development and spend cycle to recapture the consumer who seems to have moved on.