Nissan Juke 2013 review
Micra supermini excepted, Nissan no longer makes normal hatchbacks and saloons. Instead, it has become a post-modern car company and champion of the crossover concept. Having shown with the Qashqai that a high-riding hatchback with a hint of SUV is right in many buyers’ comfort zones, it now applies the formula to the next class down. The Nissan Juke is the result. The Juke's wackiness comes from Nissan’s late-1980s special projects offshoot, the Pike Factory. It put out the Pao, S-Cargo and Figaro, all retro-looking with a modern twist. Not that there’s anything retro about the Juke, which is a real-world version of the Qazana concept cars created in Nissan’s London studio. The final Qazana starred at the 2009 Geneva motor show and was nearly production ready. A smaller, cheaper car attracts a younger buyer, and the Juke plays to that audience. Its style is more exaggerated than that of today’s mainstream cars, and it takes the notion of crossing over in a whole new direction, plundering the gene pools of SUVs, sports coupés and, in the cabin, even motorcycles. Whether the mix creates a car capable of multi-disciplinary miracles, or whether each attribute is fatally compromised by every other, is open to debate, and what we'll explore here. The engine choice is simple: 1.6 or 1.6 turbo plus a Renault-sourced 1.5-litre diesel. Trim levels are slightly more confusing starting with Visia, then Acenta which can be had with a Sport Pack or Premium Pack, then top-of-the-range Tekna. The novelty in the line-up is a four-wheel drive model with the 1.6-litre Turbo engine and a CVT gearbox. It is available only in Tekna trim.
Interior
A motorbike? Apparently so. The Nissan Juke’s instrument cluster’s two dials seem separate from the dashboard, framed in mock-aluminium with a cowling floating above and joined to the dial cases by two struts. All you need are the handlebars and the rush of wind.Then there’s the centre tunnel, high and rounded and painted in a glossy silver metallic to look like a motorcycle’s petrol tank. In top Tekna versions, the silver is replaced by body colour.
The Juke is not an expensive car, as the fact that every interior plastic surface is hard shows. However, the interesting details divert your senses: chrome door handles like giant ring-pulls, plentiful cupholders, a leather-rimmed steering wheel with knurled switches for stereo and cruise control, the decent stereo itself and, best of all, the Nissan Dynamic Control System which comes as standard on Acenta and Tekna cars. The graphics are a bit Windows 2000, but the idea is very neat – it controls the climate system or other parts of the set-up (automatic headlights, unlocking regime and so on), activate a trip computer, trigger a g-force meter or open a bar-graph history of your success at driving economically. It’ll also adjust throttle settings in Sport mode.
There’s enough space in the Juke for two normal-size adults in the back, or three at a squeeze, but there’s no MPV-like seat adjustability here and the narrow windows make it feel oppressive.
The Juke sits you high relative to the road, but with the seat at its lowest you can create quite a racy, laid-back driving position. You can still see the bonnet, and the wing-top lights act as a good positioning guide. The steering wheel adjusts only for height; the adjustment lacks a helper spring, so the wheel crashes downwards if you’re not ready to support it. The front seats are comfortable enough, with very strong but quite soft lumbar support.
Performance
The Nissan Juke is heavy for a supermini. That means it has to be short-geared to give it the friskiness its design promises, with the inevitable outcome that it’s a busy-sounding motorway cruiser. The upside of every 1000rpm translating to less than 20mph in top gear in the normally-aspirated 1.6 is that you don’t have to drive at licence-threatening speeds to feel like you’re getting somewhere.
A prominent induction growl on acceleration helps the sporting tone, so you don’t mind much that the 0-60mph time is a leisurely 10.3sec (which is 2.3sec longer than the perky turbo version needs). Select Sport though the Dynamic Control System and the eagerness of the throttle response masks the fact that low-end torque is not great and that hills often need a downshift and a lot of throttle.
Select Normal and the screen shows a torque indicator. Throttle response has now gone soft, as if the Juke has gained 200kg, but ultimately the same power is available. It’s hard to see why you would ever choose this sluggish-feeling mode in normal driving. But there’s also the Eco mode, which restricts throttle opening, displays an economy meter and makes the Juke even more torpid. Use this mode only if you can’t force yourself to be light on the throttle when you’re feeling frugal.
The Juke’s Renault-sourced diesel sounds lightly chattery on start-up, a characteristic that never completely fades, and the torque hole beneath the 1750rpm peak demands a firm right foot to get this not especially speedy machine to go. But at its torque peak and beyond the motor pulls with conviction, especially if you master its six-speed stick, which shifts slickly in a north-south plane but can lose you between east and west.
source : autocar
telegraph