The secret behind Europe's most affordable car isn't in Europe at all. Renault keeps proving a simple point: to build cheaply for the European market, you don't have to stay on the continent. The prime example is Morocco. That's where the Dacia Sandero, Sandero Stepway, Jogger, Renault Express, part of the Logan range and the Renault Kardian roll off the line. And it's Morocco that became one of the secrets behind the low price of the Sandero — a car that has stayed among Europe's best-sellers for years.
Dacia's new boss Katrin Adt makes no secret of the trick: in Morocco the company has suppliers, a workforce, warm relations with the government, and it's simply “easy to do business” there. For a model like the Sandero, that changes everything. In Spain it costs a little over €13,000, remains the cheapest passenger car on the market — and in the first half of 2026 it also tops local sales. The economics of production explain a great deal.
And the numbers hit hard. According to an Oliver Wyman study, in 2024 the labor cost per car in Morocco was just $106 — about €92. For comparison: Romania — $273, Mexico — $305, Turkey — $414, China — $597. In Spain the figure already climbs to $955, in France to $1569, and in Germany all the way to $3307. So the Sandero holds its price not only thanks to a simple design and already-amortized Renault and Nissan components.
But it isn't just about wages. The Moroccan production base itself plays a huge role: the modern plant in Tangier and the older site in Casablanca. The Duster and Bigster are still assembled in Romania, but it's Morocco that has become Dacia's hub for mass-market budget models. And Renault's ties to the country go back almost a century. The company started selling cars there last century, the Casablanca plant passed into its hands in 1959, and from 1966 it built the legendary Renault 4.
Today the scale is entirely different. In 2025 Renault produced around 400,000 cars in Morocco, 300,000 of them in Tangier alone. It's the group's second production center after France: one in every six Renault Group cars sold worldwide comes from Moroccan plants. Logistics work in favor of the price too. Right next to the Tangier plant sits Tanger Med, the largest port in Africa and one of the biggest in the world. From there a Dacia can reach European countries in a few days at most. And a network of more than 100 suppliers has grown up around the plant in free-trade zones — less reliance on long-distance shipping, lower costs.
And Morocco doesn't tempt only Renault. Stellantis uses the country too: the plant in Kenitra assembles the Peugeot 208, along with the electric quadricycles Citroen Ami, Fiat Topolino and Opel Rocks-e. For the French, Morocco has become almost what Mexico was for decades to Detroit's giants. Except this convenient arrangement has a flip side — a political one. The European Union is discussing measures meant to favor cars “made in Europe” and to prop up local production of vehicles and batteries. If those rules tighten, Renault and Dacia's Moroccan plants risk landing in a grey zone: geographically close, economically attractive — but formally no longer the EU.
ACEA, the association of European carmakers, is already trying to get Morocco counted within that logic — because of its proximity and importance to the industry. For Renault it's a matter of principle: without the Moroccan base, keeping the Sandero this cheap would be almost impossible. And for the buyer the conclusion is even simpler. The battle for “European production” could one day show up not only in politics, but on the price tags of Europe's most affordable cars.
