Lada is known for its low reliability. Dacia seems to be in a more gray area, sometimes scoring well above average, sometimes below.

I know someone who had a Lada Niva, and he got stranded because a low quality pipe joint blew. True, the repair was extremely cheap, and it could probably be temporarily repaired with a hose and two zippers. Are you a mechanic that can locate and fix those kind of failures? Then Ladas are for you. You can't tell apart the windscreen fluid from the blinker fluid? Your Lada will spend more time in the repairshop than on the road.

My opinion so far is that a lot of people buy Ladas (Niva to be exact) with expectation of it being an offroader. It is not. It is a SUV and when used like usually SUVs are - it isnt as unreliable as some people make it.

Lack of airbags, shitty structure to absorb impacts, absurdly underpowered engine and weird ergonomy makes the Lada Niva viable only for offroading: farmers and hunters driving on gravel roads.

If you expect to drive more than 50% of the time on asphalt but money is tight, do yourself a favour and buy at least a Dacia Duster.

That's quite interesting, as many of my friends in post-Soviet countries all rave about how you can run Ladas into the dirt and they'll keep running. Luck of the draw perhaps?

I picked up a Dacia Sandero a year back, seems pretty well-made. Very low-tech too, even has crank windows in back.

I think they are around the "good-tech" level, similar to late 90's / early 2000 cars. Just enough to get you going economically and comfortably but without tech intruding your ride with some infotainment, updates or window slide button in some weird place or with touch control.

Dacias have gotten surprisingly good, yes. The initial models were... dubious, to say the least, but the recent offerings have had an amazing cost/quality ratio. Hell, their EV offerings are some of the best on the market.