With the Stepway, Dacia has managed to make it feel like a genuinely competitive offering in the supermini segment, rather than one that relies on its headline price tag and falls short everywhere else. With low-budget rivals drying up, the jacked-up image has now become a bit of a USP for the Stepway, which only adds to its appeal.

Truth be told, the majority of British drivers would find the Dacia Sandero to be a perfectly adequate family runabout. Britain’s cheapest car has risen in price significantly in the last few years but still remains good value beside its supermini competitors thanks to a recent mild facelift – which has just now been applied to the jacked-up Stepway model as well.

Lifted superminis are few and far between these days, despite most volume car makers dabbling in the niche segment at some point, with offerings like the Volkswagen Polo Dune, Ford Fiesta Active and the short-lived Audi A1 Citycarver. The Stepway actually outsells the regular Sandero, so Dacia has a great reason to stick with its chunky supermini.

As with the rest of the Dacia range, the Sandero Stepway has received some revisions to mark the firm’s new logo which was rolled out in the second half of 2022. The trim level line up has changed, with the range-topping Prestige swapped out for a suitably alliterative ‘Extreme’ version to accompany the entry-level Essential and the one we’re testing here – the mid-range Expression.

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