We invented the Dacia Sandman - and the internet fell for it

Try this: tap the words Dacia Sandman into the search engine of your choice. I've just done so and Google has come up with an AI overview that describes the Dacia Sandman as "a rumoured, highly anticipated, affordable compact crossover and camper van concept for 2026". This overview is followed by reams of information on the vehicle, loads of AI-produced images, several YouTube films and Facebook and Reddit posts on it. The Dacia Sandman is, of course, the figment of someone's overactive imagination. Mine. You may remember that back in 2019 Autocar's genius artist Ben Summerell-Youde and I came up with a concept for an affordable camper van badged as a Dacia but based on a previous-generation Renault Trafic. I plagiarised the name Sandman from a 1970s Australian Holden panel van of the same name that featured fabulous psychedelic graphics. Summerell-Youde (a VW T3 Syncro owner) and I went for simplicity, with steel wheels, tough black plastic sill protectors and wheel-arch extensions, and no infotainment but just an adaptable smartphone holder. The interior wouldn't have sinks, wardrobes or a fitted bed because customers would either fit the vehicle out themselves or buy optional packs from Dacia. The finished result in bright green looked very cool. We even had a couple of surfboards on the roof to make the point. What inspired the Dacia Sandman was my frustration with car companies' endless promotion of SUVs and crossovers as vehicles for those with 'an adventurous lifestyle'. I'd lost count of how many videos I'd had to sit through at car launches in which young twentysomethings would be lashing surfboards onto the top of Nissan Qashqais (or similar) and heading off to the beach. It was clearly a fantasy land cooked up by car company marketing departments and their ad agencies. The year before we penned the Dacia Sandman, I'd been kitesurfing in Sicily and climbing in the French Alps. In both places, the young people following these sports were living in vans - either self-converted old vans or ancient VW Californias or the equivalent. Not a £40k brand-new crossover in sight. Some time after the article was published, I was at a launch of the Jogger and asked some of the Dacia people if they had seen the piece and what they thought of the Sandman. The boss of Dacia UK at the time was a proper enthusiast called Luke Broad. He had seen the Sandman in Autocar and thought it was cool. As did the product planning bod from France, but both told us that there were no plans to make something similar in the near or far future. Clearly, they weren't making that up to keep me quiet. We thought we had handed them on a plate a sure-fire commercial winner. Judging by the amount of material online today, perhaps we had. Many of the AI creations that you will see have moved quite a distance from our original concept. For starters, many of the headlines refer to the Dacia Sandman 4x4 and we never, despite Summerell-Youde owning a four-wheel-drive camper, envisaged the Sandman being 4WD, not least because the Renault Trafic wasn't available with that drivetrain. Besides, it would cost too much. Some of the AI images have also ignored our original concept of not fitting out the Sandman with costly and space-gobbling things like wardrobes. The whole fake Dacia Sandman business has been an eye-opener for me. The amount of sheer cobblers written is incredible. One US-based site says the following about the vehicle: "For 2026 the Romanian brand draws attention with the Dacia Sandman 2026, a small SUV-camper crossover that promises adventure on a friendly budget. As someone who spent time with the new Sandman in the city and on light trails, I am excited to share real world impressions." With all this interest in the Dacia Sandman, one wonders whether the company might have a change of heart and actually produce something along the Sandman's lines. A call to Dacia resulted in the following statement from a spokesperson: "We've been asked so many times about the Sandman based off web stories that it's become a famous anecdote within the business. Although there are no plans for a Sandman, we are pleased people are associating our brand with the outdoors. We know people want accessible adventure and continue to deliver that with our products today." The whole virtual Dacia Sandman pantomime has also really cheered me up because it graphically shows that there is a real need for proper printed motoring magazines such as Autocar and its monthly rivals that can be trusted and that employ people who know what they're talking about and who have contacts at the core of the motor industry. Many journalists yearn to produce something with longevity. Steve Cropley has been writing a novel for the past 40 years (called High Compression, about Formula 1) and many of us have written motoring books. Much of what I've written over the past 20 years has ended up wrapped around cod and chips, but thanks to some very bored people around the world, my legacy is that I created a legendary vehicle called the Dacia Sandman. Only in the virtual world, but who cares about reality any more?

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We invented the Dacia Sandman - and the internet fell for it

Will Dacia ever build the Sandman camper van concept that has taken on an AI life of its own online?

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We invented the Dacia Sandman - and the internet fell for it

Will Dacia ever build the Sandman camper van concept that has taken on an AI life of its own online?

More from Autocar

Top 10s

Latest car reviews

Top manufacturers

Quick search

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About Autocar