The Logan sedan from the house of Renault (or Dacia elsewhere) is due for a comprehensive upgrade. Unlike the Indian version from Mahindra which boasted of special paint schemes and interiors alone, the Romanian version will come with a new sporty engine.

Sports car designer Ken Melville was assigned a task by Renault to design a vehicle that could ingest four adults, a pig, a sink, and 100kg of potatoes. He went ahead and created what today we call Logan, a simple, no frills cheap sedan which has sold even in markets it wasn't intended for.

To add life and possibly numbers to the sales chart, Renault will plonk the 133 horse-power engine borrowed from the Renault Twingo under the Logan's bonnet for its Romanian customers wanting extra fun without shelling too much of extra money.

Meanwhile the men at Renault are very optimistic that the Logan-based Sandero hatchback will fare well in the EuroNCAP crash test. They expect it to come back with 4 stars, a very respectable result if it happens.

The Sandero will be unveiled at the British International Motor Show in London next month. If the crash test works in favor of them, it will serve as a huge boost to the image of the car and could attract plenty of entry-level buyers in the safety-conscious U.K market, where it goes on sale next year.

There has always been the question of safety whenever an entry-level car is introduced in a matured market. Take for example Chinese cars which come at a rock-bottom price tag but remain in the dealer lots due to safety concerns of the customer. Manufacturers of small and cheap cars target the mileage and cost areas more than the safety of the vehicle which remains the bare minimum required for the vehicle to qualify selling in an overseas market. Dacia's Sandero is here to prove that wrong and conveys that all cheap cars aren't necessarily unsafe. For the buyer looking at a 5 door hatch for under £7,000, a 4-star EuroNCAP car is the bargain of the century.

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