The Dacia Spring proves that small, cheap EVs can be hilarious fun

You hear a lot of fretting about what electric cars mean for the future of driving as a pleasure rather than simply a way to get from here to there, then back to here because you left your phone behind. Where’s the fun, say EV critics, if you’re denied the thrum and thunder that only comes from small explosions happening ahead of your toes or behind your back? I understand these concerns, and to the people raising them I want to ask, have you driven the Dacia Spring?

You might have seen the Spring. Aside from the idiotic Citroën Ami quadricycle, it’s currently Britain’s cheapest electric car, kicking off at £14,995 for the model with the small battery and a spec best described as Amish. A bigger battery and the swishier trim level will run you 17 grand. Either way, you get a tiny, tinny hatchback built in China by Renault’s Romanian budget label and you’d never mistake it for pretty, what with its knock-kneed stance and awkwardly weedy body. If I had to sum up the looks of the Spring in one word, that word would be ‘dorky’.

As befits a car built down to a price, the Spring’s doors shut with a clang like someone kicking an apple at an industrial bin, but once you’re inside it isn’t horrible, even if the general standard of materials doesn’t suggest a dawn raid on Audi’s plastics factory. Dacia gives you all the modern features you need, such as seats and windows, plus real controls for important things like the heater and the shortcut that disables the ham-fisted lane-keeping assistance and ill-informed speed limit bonger. I wouldn’t call the Spring luxurious but it has a certain simple and appealing functionality, like a gas hob or a cash machine.

At this price, the Spring’s main rival is probably a second-hand Volkswagen e-Up, and for someone who just wants an agreeable commuter car I would struggle to recommend the Dacia. It’s just a bit too geeky and clangy where the VW feels sturdy and mature. But if you’re a car person, if you love driving, if you want to experience an EV that’s as entertaining as a fuel-burning equivalent, I think you might like it.

Before I borrowed one, the PR people made a point of emphasising that it’s a city car. The implication being, don’t hammer it up the motorway from Exeter to Aberdeen and then whinge that it needs lots of charging and makes your arse ache. But after a couple of days driving around town in the Spring, admiring its decent ride and ability to scuttle through tight gaps, I needed to get halfway across southern England and decided it was up to the job. So I juiced the battery to the top, set Google Maps to avoid motorways and off I went.

The Spring managed brilliantly. In fact, it was hilarious. If you truly love cars, you’ll know there’s little that’s as much fun as wringing every drop from a low-powered snotbox, as anyone who’s door-handled a 106 or Aygo down a wiggly B-road will attest. And the Spring, despite having no gearchange or gasping sub-one-litre engine, manages to replicate that feeling in a very amusing way. For one thing, it’s the first EV I’ve driven that doesn’t insouciantly ooze everywhere on a thick sheet of torque. Yes, it zips off the line decently, but it gets noticeably slowed by hills, at which point instead of banging it down a gear you can tap it out of eco mode and kill the air-con before mashing the throttle to the grimly pube-y carpet as you try to extract all 64 horsepower.

The really amusing thing, however, is the handling. As you’d expect from its tip-toed stance, the Spring rolls a lot and its tyres – from comedy is-that-real-or-are-you-being-racist Chinese brand Linglong – are only 165/55s. In all conditions it heels over like a stricken trawler and in the damp especially it doesn’t have a ton of grip, but this is what makes it excellent fun for the attentive driver. It moves around, it demands concentration, it rewards forward planning. The steering is the weak link here, being far too light and wispy, but the massive wheel and well-judged ratio help you to pour it through corners, conserving momentum wherever you can, like you’re in a Citroën 2CV.

As you can probably tell, I liked the Spring a lot. It reminded me of the cheapo tin boxes everyone used to have when they first learnt to drive and the tyre-torturing thrills that came with them. It’s also amazingly good value, not for its low list price but because every time you drive it you get to use almost all of its capabilities, and you can’t say that of a 911 GT3 RS. The fact that the Spring runs on electricity is irrelevant. A fun car is a fun car and the Dacia Spring is, in its own fugly, funny and flawed way, a surprisingly fun car.