Vlad Nancă

Dacia, 30 Years of Social History

2003

  • Vlad Nancã, Dacia, 30 Years of Social History, 2003, Videostill

    Colour video, no sound, 4'44''

Romania's 'Volkswagen' was the Dacia 1300. With Romania distancing itself from the leading role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1960s, refusing to send troops in support of the Warsaw Pact to quell the Prague Spring uprising in 1968, Romania made friends in the western world. The FRG had already established diplomatic relations in 1967. In 1969 there was a cooperation between the Romanian state and the French company Renault and the car production of the Dacia 1300 was started in Romania and continued after a few years on its own. Up until the end of production on July 21, 2004, the car was delivered almost two million times with hardly any changes in design or technique. The Dacia 1300 became the 'Volkswagen' of Romania and has played a major role in determining the image of Romanian cities and many other cities in Eastern Europe. With such minimal adaptations of technology and design over a long period of time, the car is also an expression of socialist planned economy and stagnation.

The Dacia 1300 continued to shape the cityscape of Bucharest more than a decade even after the 1989 revolution against Ceauşescu. Vlad Nancă investigated this phenomenon and in 2003 documented dozens of Dacia 1300 in the cityscape of Bucharest.

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