The Juke: a crossover with class
THIS strange beast is the Nissan Juke. A small crossover designed for the city, it’s the funny-looking little sibling to Nissan’s super-successful Qashqai. At first sight it appears something of an oddity with its large, round headlights, bulb-shaped sidelights and protruding bottom lip. Its shape comes from a desire to blend toughness with sportiness and attract male buyers into a market segment that many ignore. So the bottom half of the car is SUV while the top half is a sports car.
Despite the fact that decent crossovers of coupe and SUV are rare, the Juke is surprisingly successful. On the road the car attracts a lot of attention and most of it seems positive. Selling a car as unusual-looking as this would be a bold step for any brand to take and it’s admirable that Nissan had the kintamas to take it.
At first, driving the Juke is a little surreal. You sit up high SUV-style – which is advantageous in terms of the view – yet the car handles much more like a sports car.
Historically, splicing a sports car with an SUV has given questionable results. But the Juke has British blood. Designed in London and built in Sunderland, bods from Nissan’s chassis engineering division at Cranfield have developed and tested the car for UK roads so the ride and handling is surprisingly good. The Juke has a go kart-like feel in the bends with little body roll.
Not that this model feels particularly quick. With its more economical 115bhp, 1.6-litre petrol engine it takes a fairly leisurely 11sec to reach 62mph. The car has three modes: normal, eco and sport. Eco mode will return the best mileage but the sport mode does liven things up a bit. There is a more powerful petrol version available – which delivers 187bhp and can reach 62mph in a more urgent 8sec – and a diesel engine, too. There is also the option to equip the car with four-wheel drive rather that just driving the front wheels as this model does. Strangely when you drive the Juke it feels much bigger than it is. Yet it’s a supermini so it’s essentially the same size as Nissan’s Note and is built on the Nissan Micra platform.
Inside, the Juke feels much more spacious than its exterior dimensions belie. Our Juke is in “Force Red”; and the interior is in black with accents of the same colour in the trim and the seats. Here more than anywhere it’s quite clear that the Juke’s London designers looked to motorcycle design for inspiration. The centre console – which houses the gear stick – looks like a motorcycle fuel tank and gives the car real character, though the dashboard does suffer a little from too much hard plastic.
The controls are very clever too, what Nissan calls its “Dynamic Control System”. In practice you can adjust the drive settings or climate control by using the same few buttons and dials. By switching a “mode” button the display changes colour and content – from drive mode to climate control – and thus changes the function of the entire control unit. Impressive that.
Its green credentials are unexpectedly disappointing. Neither the fuel economy nor emissions are as good as they could have been. Despite this the car is comfortable as well as quirky and the most surprising element of all is how quickly I come to like it. And it’s unique. There really isn’t anything else like it. Which means like it or not it’s in a class of its own.
THE FACTS:
NISSAN JUKE
PRICE: £15,736
0-62MPH: 11 secs
TOP SPEED: 111mph
CO2 G/KM: 147G/KM
MPG COMBINED: 44.8 mpg
THE VERDICT:
DESIGN
PERFORMANCE
PRACTICALITY
VALUE FOR MONEY