Britain's best affordable car revealed as ‘fashionable and popular' SUV that ‘give you everything you need'
MOTOR MONEY Britain's best affordable car revealed as 'fashionable and popular' SUV that 'give you everything you need'
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BRITAIN'S best affordable car has just been revealed – and it's a stylish, rugged SUV that proves budget-friendly doesn't have to mean boring.
The Dacia Duster has taken the title of Best Value Car at the 2025 Autocar Awards, impressing judges with its bold looks, practicality, and unbeatable price tag.
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Autocar's judges were especially impressed by the Duster's practicality and generous standard kit
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Praised as both 'fashionable and popular', the Duster is winning over British drivers by delivering 'everything you need' – and nothing you don't.
Autocar's expert panel said the SUV stood out in a market full of rising prices, thanks to its smart design, solid build and great value.
It might not be the cheapest car on sale – or even the cheapest Dacia – but it offers more for your money than many rivals.
Editor Mark Tisshaw said: 'The Dacia Duster capitalises on the seemingly obvious idea of offering buyers everything they need, nothing they don't, and just enough of the things they want.'
Far from a bare-bones motor, the Duster has a chunky, confident look with big wheels and an upright stance that leans into its off-roader image.
Inside, the dashboard and windscreen design even give off a hint of Land Rover Defender.
It comes in four trims – Essential, Expression, Journey and Extreme – with prices starting from just £19,380.
There are also three powertrains to choose from, including a hybrid, plus a proper 4x4 option for those needing real off-road ability.
Autocar's judges were especially impressed by the Duster's practicality and generous standard kit.
Features like touchscreen infotainment, parking sensors, and air-con come as standard on many models – a rarity at this price point.
Inside Dacia's £1m desert buggy taking on big boys at the Dakar Rally – with juicy V6 engine and aerospace roll cage
Dacia's UK Brand Director, Luke Broad, said: 'Every time the Duster wins an award, it's not just for its incredible value for money, but also for its style and practical design.
We give customers everything they need, and nothing they don't, at the very best price.'
For drivers who want something tough, roomy and affordable, the Duster is a rare find.
The 4x4 version adds 217mm of ground clearance and a clever Terrain Control system with five modes to handle anything from muddy tracks to icy roads.
Since launching in the UK in 2013, Dacia has sold over 260,000 cars, with the Duster being one of the brand's biggest hits.
It's now the best-selling SUV to private buyers in Europe since 2018 – and one of the most trusted names in value motoring.
In a world of rising car prices and overly complicated tech, the Dacia Duster keeps things simple – but never basic.
And with the 2025 Best Value Car award under its belt, it's official: Britain's top affordable SUV really does give you everything you need.
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From the archive: Reality: a charter for avoidance
Photo by Maurice Hibberd/Evening Standard/) In 1979 Mervyn King, later governor of the Bank of England from 2003 to 2013, argued that the British state was too dilapidated to deal with a modern economy. Labour had been complaisant, but the Tories resisted reform. 'In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.' It is hard to reconcile Benjamin Franklin's words with the experience of taxation in post-war Britain. Tax rates switch with bewildering frequency, and rarely do more than a few months go by without some kind of tinkering being done upon the system itself. Margaret Thatcher is basing her campaign upon the firm promise – one of the few she has made – that the immediate effect of her victory would be another – downward – shift in the rate of income tax. Indeed, Tory policy for the past few years has concentrated unflinchingly upon disseminating the myth that Britain is a heavily-overtaxed country. 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And he rejected indexation, on the proper grounds that it would be wrong to index-link capital gains without doing so for other forms of capital income, such as building-society interest. But he rejected the logic of his own argument, which was that if inflation created a problem (clearly it did) then indexation should be introduced across-the-board, And if it did not, there was no case for giving special treatment to capital gains. What the Chancellor actually did (and it scarcely fits with the image of a Chancellor 'making the pips squeak') was merely reduce the rate of capital gains tax: so that the first £1,000 of gain is exempt altogether, and gains up to £5,000 in a year pay a maximum average of only 12 per cent. The marginal rate then jumps to 50 per cent, before falling to 30 per cent on gains above £9,500. This is a curious rate schedule, to say the least. 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Discrimination between different types of saving involves different rules for each kind of asset, which produces the complexity on which the investment-columns of the newspapers thrive, and makes the basis of avoidance devices. The consequence of failure to apply consistent treatment to savings and investment income is that much decision-making is dominated by tax considerations, both at the personal and the industrial level – where the financing package associated with a decision is often more critical than the basis profitability of the investment being examined. What is the rationale for a system in which mergers may take place essentially for tax reasonsL in which tax advisers are more Important than engineer and export managers, and there is an incentive for valuable time to be spent on socially pointless activities. The favours given to life-insurance companies, pension funds and owner-occupiers, though taken politically for granted, are very hard to justify. They happen to suit the life-style of middle-class people with predictable career-patterns, who remain largely immobile both geographically and occupationally. The sort of person who comes to mind, in fact, closely resembles the people who construct and control the tax system. He is a civil servant, living in (say) Wimbledon: able to stay without interruption in the same owner-occupied house; travel to work by train (zero-rated for VAT): look forward to a secure and inflation-proofed pension; able to put any spare cash into a life-insurance policy which will mature at the right moment to pay school fees, and thus secure a foothold in the system for a future generation. I have absolutely no wish to discriminate against civil servants living in Wimbledon, but neither can I think of a good reason for discriminating in their favour. Given the deficiencies of our economic performance – central so much campaign rhetoric – it is odd that we should offer incentives to people in the City so that they can think up dis-incentives which work against those who move around after employment (thus wishing to rent, rather than buy a home); who disagree with staid employers (thus placing low value on pension rights) and wish to exploit new business ideas, but cannot do so because any savings they may have are locked-up in life insurance. Here we come to the argument, which will be much rehearsed in the next few weeks, which says that only a big reduction in the tax burden can eliminate the worst distortions, and 'free the spirit of enterprise from the straitjacket of excessive taxation', etc. Although a cut in rates would reduce the magnitude of the problem – depending upon what sacrifice is made in essential services – there are two large difficulties in the argument. First, as the tables show, Britain simply is not highly taxed in comparison with many of those countries which are exhibited as examples of economic success. Despite the problems of comparison, the broad picture is clear. We bear less tax than Scandinavia, rather more than America and Japan, and about the same as the West European neighbours which out perform us. Secondly, many of the problems I have described derive from the weakness of the tax base, rather than the rates which are applied. We are taxing the wrong things, and failing to tax the right things. Only a virtual elimination of direct taxation would deal with this – and the point is important in terms of the present political argument, which often proposes a shift to indirect taxation. A small shift to indirect taxation would make no impact on the inadequacies of the present tax base: to make a large shift would be to abandon any pretence of progressive taxation. I believe the only way to deal with the problem is to have a uniform treatment of income from capital, through a progressive personal expenditure tax of the kind proposed by Nicholas Kaldor in 1955, and again by the Meade Committee last year. This has not been welcomed, or even much discussed by those British politicians who are most vehement about the evils of taxation: and what they perhaps care for as little as anything is the Meade finding that the whole system could be much simpler in operation than that we have at present. It would be based purely on cash flow, eliminating the distinction between income and capital on which most of the present-day opportunities for avoidance depend. An expenditure tax would be levied directly on individuals, and by choice of rate could be made as progressive as the government of the day desired. Taxable expenditure would be receipts of cash from all sources (whether tips, or sales of shares) minus cash deposited in 'registered assets' which would include practically all kinds of saving except current accounts. PAYE would continue to be deducted at source, and the majority of taxpayers would notice little administrative change. It might be argued that such a tax favours the rich, because only the rich can afford to save. But this forgets that the rich also dis-save, and that the system we have makes little impact on spending out of capital gains and inherited wealth. Indeed, capital taxes are largely ineffective at the moment: the high exemption level means that most of the wealth transferred between generations pays a very low average rate. Even since the introduction of Capital Transfer Tax (CTT) it remains easy for a couple who are well advised to pass on more than £100,000 tax-free. For this reason, gifts and bequests made to other people should be treated as part of taxable spending: resulting in an increase of the average fax on capital transfers, without the need for self-defeating marginal rates at the top. A good example of the weakness of CTT, and of the extent to which political debate on taxation is divorced from reality, occurs in the treatment of small businesses. There is a wide range of concessions, but most of them assist the founder of the business only at the end of his or her career. The problem with small business is not that it is crushed under transfer taxes, but rather that policy fails to find ways of encouraging new firms to arise and old ones to die in peace. There is little evidence that the dynasties motive is important to innovators (it is thought important by those who have inherited themselves) and some evidence that firms perform less well when the inheritors take them over. 'Small is beautiful' makes as mindless an axiom as 'big is beautiful', which ruled the sixties. Yet already, under Labour, the 1977 and '78 Budgets have produced inexplicable concessions for small business which the Tories will find it difficult to out-do. In one year these were so enormous that the size of a business liable to CTT increased eight-fold. This change was not announced by Mr Healey, and part of it could only be detected through the omission of certain words in the Finance Bill. The truth is that the decline of small business did not occur overnight, and it cannot be corrected through such huge concessions to the owners of established concerns. Indeed, an expenditure tax is more likely to do something for small-scale industrial innovation: by facilitating personal saving, and by reversing the trend towards 'institutionalisation' of the capital market. A stock item of political debate is the idea that British industry staggers under a vast tax burden. If the personal tax system is rather a shambles, the corporate tax system is chaos enclosed in mythology, with most industrial companies paying little, if any, tax. John Kay and I found that of 20 leading UK industrial concerns, 13 paid no mainstream corporation tax in 1977, and in total only £117 million of tax was paid compared with total reported profits in 1976 of £4,276 million. The 'temporary' stock relief of November 1974 has survived almost five years, with no sign of a permanent solution. Because nothing has been announced, companies are uncertain about their tax liability, and so we have a tax which raises scarcely any revenue but yet generates economic distortions. There appears to be a complete absence of ideas about what to do. In 1974, the corporate sector was threatened with financial bankruptcy because of inflation's effect on stocks: now it is intellectual bankruptcy. The most convincing alternative would be a 'cash flow corporation tax', which would be levied on the difference between receipts from sales and outlays made for current and capital inputs. Stock relief could be abolished, inflation accounting would be for tax purposes, and distinction between different types of finance would occupy less attention. I believe that such a tax, coupled with a progressive personal expenditure tax, would redress many injustices. It would represent the first serious attempt in this country to tax spending out of inherited wealth, and to lessen the transmission of privilege from one generation to the next. The effects on the economy would, I think, be restorative. Of course, there may be other solutions which can be put forward. But if any politician suggests that major reform is less than imperative, or that what is required is to 'lighten the burden', by some ad hoc juggling with the rates, he or she is avoiding one of the central problems of present political economy. [See also: Just raise tax] Related
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