Hurrah! The Dacia Duster now has a job as an ambulance

Just as there’s more than one way to skin a cat, there’s more than one way to modify a Dacia Duster. So while one person (erm, us) may drop it to the floor and give it silly wheels, another may turn it into an ambulance. A fleet of 40 ambulances, in fact.

Yep, ‘good news’ indeed, especially if you live in the corner of southern England where these will operate. They don’t replace the big, life-support booths that’ll shuttle you to hospital under blue lights, rather they’re provided by a charity as a nimble first responder to prop you up while a bigger ambulance hurtles through the streets towards you.

“The new Dusters are manned by specially trained volunteers who provide a rapid response to many 999 calls where an ambulance is requested,” we’re told. “Due to the volunteers’ locality, they can often arrive quicker than an ambulance and administer potentially life-saving pre-hospital treatment.”

We’ve long loved the Duster, but after this, we adore it even more. It’s a perfect fit for its new job in so many ways: the 13 four-wheel-drive versions the charity’s bought will scurry to more remote patients, while all 40 offer the kind of value that a charity kinda needs when making such a bulk order.

And, just to convince the responders who’ll be driving them that the Duster was a good choice, they all gathered together at Thruxton Circuit – famously one of the fastest in the UK – to gather their first impressions. We should’ve taken ours along…