On 28 June, Groupe Renault inaugurated its new Romanian head office, known as “Renault Bucharest Connected”, at a ceremony presided over by Viorica Vasilica Dancilă, Romanian Prime Minister, Thierry Bolloré, Groupe Renault’s CEO, and in presence of Laurens van den Acker, EVP Corporate Design and Gaspar Gascon-Abellan, Deputy EVP Engineering.

Bringing teams together to benefit future models

After the takeover of Dacia by Renault twenty years ago, in 1999, the various activities of Groupe Renault’s technical centre in Romania (Design, Engineering, Sales and other tertiary functions) were located at five different sites. Those activities have all contributed to the commercial success of the Global Access range and its best sellers: Sandero and Duster.

The new name, “Renault Bucharest Connected” – chosen by the employees – highlights the interactions facilitated by bringing all the staff together at a single site and the introduction of new digital resources. This new way of working will ensure greater efficiency and effectiveness in the design and development of future Groupe Renault models, and will help reach the goals set out in the Drive The Future strategic plan.

A new Design Centre with greater resources

The new Bucharest Design Centre is considerably more spacious and benefits from greater resources (such as milling machines and paint booths). The thirty or so employees (designers, model makers, digital modellers, etc.) of various nationalities (Romanian, French, Ukrainian, Moldovan, etc.) will continue to draft and design vehicles for the global market.

To mark the inauguration of the new Bucharest design centre, the design staff showed off a creation based on Duster and clearly styled for adventure! Duster is one of the Group’s iconic models and has enjoyed worldwide success with more than 2.8 million units sold under the Renault and Dacia badges since the first generation was launched in 2010.

Bringing the design and engineering teams together at one site will allow smoother and more effective communication on the projects under development.