Normally we do not treat cars with foreign registration in this section, but for this Dacia 1310 we are happy to make an exception. There are two good reasons for this.
The main reason is that this Dacia has a Romanian registration. That is special on two fronts: firstly because he therefore belongs in the homeland of Dacia. Secondly, because someone has probably made a long journey with it. It is of course possible that the Dacia came this way on a car ambulance, but why anyone would bother to bring a Dacia 1310 from Romania to the Netherlands … Anyway: it results in a spot of a very rare here car.
The Dacia 1310, spotted by AutoWeek forum member D Elzinga, certainly has the necessary traces of a respectable age, although 1310’s are – especially if they have camped in Romania – often much worse. The 1310 started life in 1969 as the 1300, the locally produced Romanian brother of the Renault 12. The ‘name’ 1310 made its appearance in 1982, a few years after Dacia presented the renewed 1300 – without further cooperation with Renault.
This copy could just be from that same year. In any case, it comes from the late 70s or early 80s. The combination of the new front with the double headlights on the one hand and the still partly chromed bumpers on the other, reveal that it is one of the first 1310s. In the mid-eighties, the 1310 got a new grille with thicker blacker plastic and the bumpers were also completely black in color. Incidentally, the Dacia 1300 managed to keep up until 2004 through numerous facelifts and additions of new variants!
Unfortunately, we do not know much concrete about this specific piece of Romanian car history, except that it is far from home. In Romania they don’t look up or down, even if it’s such an old one, but we like that there is another extra to admire in the wild in the Netherlands.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl