Love it or hate it, the Juke was a game-changer
Matt Robinson
WE’RE already bracing ourselves for an Inbox onslaught. The Nissan Juke? An icon? No, we haven’t completely lost our senses. An automotive icon does not have to be universally loved; it can be divisive, and even, as is the case here, something of a hate object for many car enthusiasts. The most important thing is its significance in the car world, and for the Juke, that can’t be overstated.
Arriving a few years after Nissan’s genre-defining Qashqai (see Icon Drives 11, issue 1,775), the smaller Juke injected further interest into higher-riding cars, but in a cheaper, more compact package. By using the ‘B’ platform shared with the likes of the Micra and Note, the firm could carry over a range of tried and tested small engines, plus keep the weight down, and the price low.
Today, almost every supermini has a lifted, compact-SUV equivalent built on the same architecture and sharing an identical set of engines. But back then, this was a revolutionary idea, and one that was clearly worth pursuing, with the Juke clocking up 136,000 European deliveries in its first year on sale. Nissan’s competitors took note, and imitators soon followed.
The Juke’s popularity came despite its Marmite looks. These shouldn’t have come as a surprise when the car was revealed at the Geneva Motor Show in 2010; the Qazana concept that previewed it at the Swiss event the previous year was as mad as a box of frogs. Inevitably, it had to be toned down, but not by much. It still tapered in the middle in the old-fashioned ‘Coke bottle’ style with cartoonish wheelarch bulges at either end, and it kept the weird split-light design with 370Z-like upper sections that housed the indicators and daytime running lights, rather than the headlights.
It was inevitable that not everyone would be fond of the looks. The Juke has been a staple of ‘ugliest cars’ articles ever since, if not appearing quite as frequently as the likes of the Pontiac Aztec and the SsangYong Rodius. It certainly stood out at the time, but nearly a decade and a half on, there are so many of these about that they now blend into the background.
And so, when approaching the 2012 example lent to us from Nissan UK’s heritage fleet, there are no feelings of shock or revulsion, merely cool indifference; it’s just such a familiar sight. Things get more interesting on the inside, though. The difference in quality between this and the first-generation Qashqai is clear – it feels much
