These images of a Dacia 1300 in NYC will never be repeated

  • The Dacia 1300 was first created in 1969, and the last model was created in 2004
  • Photographer Eduard Palaghita shot the Dacia 1300 during lockdown
  • Pictured in New York in 2020, the city streets are empty

Published on Aug 22, 2024 at 4:39 PM (UTC+4)
by Niamh Spence

Last updated on Aug 22, 2024 at 7:03 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by Tom Wood

A photoshoot of a Dacia 1300 in New York is reminiscent of something you’d expect to see in the 1970s or 1980s, not 2020.

Pictures taken during the 2020 pandemic show New York looking like a ghost town, with the Dacia five-door model front and center alongside some of the city’s most famous landmarks.

The model, which was built in 1977, looks in near perfect condition as it sits alongside empty streets, closed theatres and restaurants when the world was forced to stay at home.

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New York like you’ve never seen it before

Pictures of the Dacia 1300 like this will likely never be seen again, and New York’s hustle and bustle has returned meaning you’d be hard pushed to find an empty street in the city again.

With photographs taken at key locations like the Upper West Side and Broadway, the empty streets look like a movie set rather than New York.

Mint condition Dacia 1300

The 1977 Dacia 1300 driven by Palaghita is in perfect condition, and still has all of its original factory parts. Speaking in an interview to Digi24, Eduard Palaghita explained: “The car is from 1977, completely original, we have not made any changes, everything is exactly as it left the factory.

“I made improvements, but I refined the car, that is, I put new tires, I changed the gaskets.”

The Dacia 1300 is also a classic design by the brand, and comes with a lot of history behind it.

Dacia originally began making this style in 1969 in Romania, after the country struck a deal with Renault to be able to use their French designs.

The Dacia 1300 is the first vehicle using that classic design and became a staple of the brand for five decades. In fact, the production of Dacia 1300s only stopped in July 2004 meaning you may well still see some of them on the road today. Before production of them stopped, nearly 2 million Dacia 1300s were assembled at Dacia’s facility in Mioveni.

The brand has gone on to build and create many other models, including a new off-road concept in 2022.

# Tags - Car News, Cars, Dacia, history


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Niamh Spence

Niamh is a freelance journalist, who writes and contributes to lifestyle and online titles. Previous work includes; Stylist, Grazia, The Telegraph, LADBible, Entertainment Daily, BBC, The Mirror, The Sun, Daily Star and The Metro