Dacia 500 Lăstun

Plans for a very small car began in Romania in the late 1970s, and some sources say the idea was Nicolae Ceaușescu’s own: a car cheaper than the Dacia 1300 and the coming Oltcit.source 1 Adrian Marian, one of its designers, was in no doubt.

Three projects competed, among them a shortened Dacia 1300 estate and a vehicle with two moped engines. The winner came from the National Institute of Heat Engines, INMT, in Bucharest, where a team of engineers led by Valentin Cosoroabă began work in April 1980.source 1 Working prototypes, the Egreta and the Șoim, were tried in all weathers and on all kinds of ground. In March 1982 a public poll chose the name Lăstun, the Romanian for the house martin; a 1:5 model reached a drag coefficient of 0.25 in the wind tunnel; and after crash tests to European rules the car was homologated on 25 September 1985.source 1source 3

The design was a three-door hatchback 2,950 mm (116 in) long, with room for two adults and two children.source 3source 4 Its body was glass-reinforced polyester over a steel monocoque. The engine, mounted across the front and driving the front wheels, was half the Oltcit Club’s air-cooled flat-four, made into a 499 cc in-line twin of 22.5 PS (17 kW) with a shorter stroke, the first Romanian car with a transverse engine. The four-speed gearbox was a copy of the Trabant’s, column change and all.source 1source 3 The engineer Paul Pascu counted about 207 parts from Dacia and 200 from the Oltcit, and said the car had to cost half a Dacia, though a 12-inch wheel did not cost half as much as a 13-inch one. It came out at 37,000 lei to build, against a target of about 35,000.source 1

Timișoara

The factory chosen was Tehnometal Timișoara, which made livestock shelters and assembled tractors for export. Its director opposed the car, angered Ceaușescu and was replaced; the works was re-equipped as the Întreprinderea de Autoturisme Timișoara.source 1 Dacia lent only its name, one the public already knew.source 1 Marian said the plant built two or three cars a day, when about 10,000 a year were needed to break even.source 2

The body caused the next crisis. At a meeting in Timișoara with Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu, Pascu recalls, the minister of the chemical industry admitted that he could not supply the hardener the polyester needed. Elena Ceaușescu demanded a steel car, and her husband ordered one within a month. The steel panels took two more years, and the first steel-bodied cars came out shortly before the revolution of December 1989; the tailgate stayed glass fibre to the end.source 1 Romanian Wikipedia sorts the cars into three series: all glass fibre and barely trimmed, then steel doors with mixed panels, then all-steel panels with big tail lamps.source 3

On sale, and banned

The Dacia 500 went on sale without advance publicity, at 47,000 lei by one account; Adevărul says the first car was put on sale on 26 January 1988, Ceaușescu’s birthday, for 50,000 lei, 25,000 less than a Dacia 1310.source 1source 5 Romanian Wikipedia, citing the magazine Autoturism, puts the first batch in January 1989, so the sale of 1988 was perhaps a token one.source 3 A stretched four-seat prototype was shown at the Bucharest International Fair in 1989.source 3source 4

The quality was notorious. Pascu blamed glass fibre from a polymer that did not meet the specification and warped after moulding, so that the cars looked home-made; cars broke down often on their very first trip, and within two years the Dacia service shops were full of them. A gear expert who examined the copied gearbox said it could not work. The electromagnetic fuel pump, made at Scornicești, was noisy and unreliable, and fuel use that was meant to be 3 litres per 100 km reached about 9.source 1source 5source 4 After the revolution owners formed an association and demanded compensation, and in March 1990 the national commission for standards and quality banned the car’s production and sale. Adevărul calls it the only car banned by Romania’s consumer protection.source 5 Production nonetheless went on into 1991; whether the ban was lifted or simply ignored is not known.source 1source 3source 4 Some cars stood in stock until 1993, sometimes repainted to hide the rust, and in 1992 the government closed the Timișoara works.source 1source 3

He still defends the prototypes, which he says he drove for more than 800,000 km. In 2022 the German magazine Oldtimer Markt called the Lăstun probably the worst car in the world.source 1source 6

Few survive; many were abandoned in the 1990s.source 3 Marian scrapped his own collection car when the city hall ordered it off the public road under threat of a fine.source 2 Some went to Poland, where an advert for at least one registered Lăstun was archived in 2025.source 3 No Lăstun has been found in a museum, an owners’ club or a major auction.