Logan’s run – and now Logan’s son

Renault launched two new versions of the Dacia Logan “world car”, including a pick-up and a very different hatchback version called the Sandero, which has been designed for the Brazilian market, but will also come to Europe.

Now there are five derivatives of the Logan programme, still referred to within Renault by its codename - X90. Renault chairman Carlos Ghosn says there will be six. But X90 programme manager Gerard Detourbet thinks he’s made a mistake – “I think that six is not enough” he said. “We want to develop more bodies on the same platform. The next one should be a kind of crossover – that will be the sixth body. But after that it’s not finished for us – the story is just beginning.”

X90 is more than a car programme – it’s designed to take Renault into new markets, and to develop new plants and new territories around the world, like India, Russia, Morocco and Iran. “The most important market is still Romania. We are just starting to increase capacity from 35 units per hour to 60, hoping that the production rate at the end of 2008 will be 400,000 cars a year,” said Detourbet.

This capacity increase is vital if Renault is to relaunch the Dacia brand in the UK. That’s likely to happen in 2009, when the Logan Crossover comes on stream – though the Sandero hatch, which shares the platform but few body panels with Logan, is a possibility too.

Logan accounts for very large proportion of the extra 800,000 cars Ghosn wants Renault to make every year under Commitment 2009. Indeed, Detourbet reckons Logan family production could top 1m a year by 2009. And that’s without China, which won’t build the current car – “Logan is not big enough for China. The car we’ll introduce in China will be the next evolution of the car,” said Detourbet.

Meanwhile, Renault is working on “son of Logan” – a cheaper, smaller car being developed jointly with Indian scooter-maker Bajaj, and to be sold with a $3,000 price tag. “We’re at beginning of the life of this project,” said Detourbet. But radical thinking is needed in order to keep the costs down. “We need to develop new powertrain – an existing R powertrain would cost $3,000 alone!”

The project is fundamentally “a new idea of a car”, he said. Not a car we can sell everywhere in the world – not Europe, not China. It will be designed for the Indian market , maybe also places like Thailand. But it might be possible to develop a more upmarket version that fits “between $3,000 car and Logan”. This could be sold in Europe as a basic, eco-friendly city car.