By Indians, for Indians perhaps, but mostly for the world
words: gautam sen

Yes, you have read it right. The car on the cover and in these pages was made in India. By Dilip Chhabria’s DC Design. To a design brief from – and under the supervision of – people from Renault. The Dacia Logan Steppe is a fully working prototype derived from the Renault/Dacia Logan saloon and provides a ‘preview’ of the estate version of the French-Romanian car that has become a major hit in Eastern Europe. Since its launch in September 2004, more than 180,000 Logans have been sold, with as many as over 13,000 sold in the more demanding markets of Western Europe too, where sales began recently.

It’s no secret that Renault is planning to launch a shorter hatch and an estate version of the Logan. The hatch is planned for later, whereas the estate is due for launch in 2007. Remove the cladding from the wheel arches and the running board, take off that slim luggage rack on the roof, replace those butch bumpers with something more like that on the saloon, and yes, change the wheels back to steel 14 or 15-inchers, and you will see the production version of the estate. More interestingly, the estate may be on sale in India too.
And that too, as a seven-seater! Okay, before we get ahead of ourselves, first things first. The car in the pics, the Logan Steppe was prototyped by DC Design. No, we don't have this information from DC Design or from DC himself either, as mum’s the word. Since the problems that DC faced after the brouhaha of the Aston AM V8 prototyping episode (where some quarters of the press misinterpreted the proto job as a full design project, and Aston, along with Ford's Premier Automotive Group, decided to boycott him) Dilip would – sensibly – prefer maintaining a very low profile vis-à-vis his proto

work for international majors. And so he hasn’t been saying anything despite our efforts to extricate some information. It’s easier with the guys at Renault – they have no issue talking about their association with DC. Renault, as you know, own Dacia, and all design and development work that happens for Dacia is done at their technocentre in the suburbs of Paris. And though the basic design and engineering happens there, some of the actual
prototyping, especially for concepts, is subcontracted out to prototype houses in Europe. And for the first time Renault decided to subcontract to an Indian prototype builder.
The detail design came from Renault as soft copy, that DC translated into sheet metal, plastics and polycarbonate, or whatever that they use these days.
Of course, as a concept Renault/Dacia couldn’t show just a run-of-the-mill estate, so they have had it decked out as the Steppe. It’s all about accessible freedom and adventure and winter sports. With the removable rear bench folded down, the occupants can rest and recuperate with flasks full of appropriate liquids stored in side pockets. Meanwhile, at the back of the boot, special heated hooks allow wet boots and gloves to be hung and dried.

A special tool kit allows for the repair of sports gear including the waxing and grinding of skis… More importantly, the Steppe gives you a very good idea about what the production estate will be like. Width and height is expected to remain somewhat similar to that of the saloon: 1.74 and 1.53 metres respectively. But overall length – at 4.47 metres for the Steppe – is decidedly more than that of the saloon's 4.25. Most of that comes from the wheelbase that has been extended considerably on the Steppe: you can see that the lower trailing edge of the rear pair of doors is comfortably ahead of the rear wheel arches despite being ‘squared off.’
The interesting point to note is that the Logan estate – other than the typical five-seater version – will also be made as a seven-seater. As the Logan’s product planning manager, Martin Boutard explained, the Indian penchant for more seats has got the boffins at Renault working on a seven-seater version, presumably inward-facing individual seats that fold on to the sides of the boot. The tailgates for the Steppe are a symmetrical pair with both doors opening out on hinges that are neatly concealed alongside the taillamp cluster, with Boutard explaining that that seemed to be the best and most
convenient solution. Boot volume is an absolutely cavernous 1.7 cubic metres with the rear bench down. The Logan estate is also expected to be made in a van version, with the door and rear set of glasses blanked out. In that configuration the doors make a lot of sense.

We don’t see the van version making it to India, but the seven-seater estate version seems to be a sure-shot bet for this market. And like the saloon Logan (to be launched by the Mahindra-Renault joint venture latest by early next year), the estate version will also be made with the 75bhp 1.4 and the 90bhp 1.6 petrols, and the new and very potent 1.5 dCi diesel. Boutard assured us that for India too that the diesel, along with the petrols, were under consideration. Given the increasing acceptance that the Tata Indigo Marina seems to be seeing, the estate Logan too has more than a fair chance at succeeding, especially
with the seven seats as its ace.