The Dacia Lăstun is a 3-door hatchback from Dacia, built from 1988 to 1991, in the age of turbocharging and the first electronic engine management. Under the bonnet: 0.5 L I2.
Where it came from
The Dacia 500 Lăstun (Romanian pronunciation: [ləsˈtun]) is a small city car manufactured by Tehnometal, Timișoara, under the auto marque Dacia. The name derives from the Romanian word for house martin, a small bird related to swallows.
Under the skin
Power comes from 0.5 L I2. It weighs 590 kg. It shifts through a 4-speed manual. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 1915 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
In context
Its family tree is legible: assembly was at Timișoara, Romania. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the BMW 5 Series, the Ferrari F40, the Lexus LS — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Dacia catalogue sit the Dacia 1100 and the Dacia 1210.
What it costs now
MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Dacia Lăstun has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.