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Dacia (car)

The present-day Dacia (pronounced DAH-tchee-ah) automobile is a Romanian car, based on a Renault model of the 1970s, Dacia having acquired the tooling from Renault. Minor cosmetic changes were made every few years in an effort to increase the public's interest in purchasing a newer model.

The factory was built in 1968, in Colibaşi, near Piteşti and since the 1970s, it built a clone of Renault 12.

During the communist era, in the plant where Dacias are made there essentially two assembly lines, one line producing Dacias intended for sale in Romania and the other line producing identically the same car (albeit from superior parts, and assembled with greater care) for export. It is common knowledge that many Romanians living near the Hungarian border purchased their Dacia in Hungary and drove it back home.

In September 1999, Dacia was bought by the Renault group, which announced some new models to be launced in 2004 (namely the modern new X90). With Renault, Dacia has a bright future to make Romania the hub of automobile development in Central and Eastern Europe.

Dacia sold 53,000 vehicles in 2002, and it holds an almost 50% market share in Romania.

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