If this car would have been unveiled on April Fool’s day, no one would have fell for it. Here we go again, another vehicle that hits Nissan’s showroom floors without any clue as to how to categorize it. Last year, I classified the cube as a thingamabob, so the Juke falls in the doohickey category.
Think of it as a pimple-faced Versa on high heels and hooked on anabolic steroids. On second thought, scratch that.
You either like the looks of the Juke, or get nausea from staring at it. No one is indifferent. I dropped by my kids’ school one evening to pick them up; one mom walked by and said “that’s really ugly”. Just to make things clear, she was referring to the Juke. I think.
A new engine for the North American market, the doohickey’s 1.6-litre four is turbocharged and direct-injected. It produces 188 horsepower and 177 pound-feet of torque, the latter peaking from 2,000 rpm all the way to 5,200.
The 6-speed transmission is pretty slick, but if you choose an all-wheel drive model, you’ll have to settle for a continuously-variable automatic with manual mode. It includes a Sport mode for quicker reactions to throttle input, but lacks wheel-mounted paddle shifters. Zero to 100 km/h takes 8.0 seconds; not bad, but we were expecting a quicker time. The front-drive versions are faster by about a half-second.
The Juke’s engine is both amusing and peculiar at once. Once the boost is up, which actually occurs pretty quickly, you feel like you’re catapulted from a slingshot with a very stretchy elastic band. The engine does get quite buzzy as it approaches the red line, but it’s more of a turbine-like whirl than a trashy sound.
Think of it as a pimple-faced Versa on high heels and hooked on anabolic steroids. On second thought, scratch that.
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| The Juke is a pimple-faced Versa on high heels and hooked on anabolic steroids. Maybe not. (Photo: Michel Deslauriers/Auto123.com) |
You either like the looks of the Juke, or get nausea from staring at it. No one is indifferent. I dropped by my kids’ school one evening to pick them up; one mom walked by and said “that’s really ugly”. Just to make things clear, she was referring to the Juke. I think.
A new engine for the North American market, the doohickey’s 1.6-litre four is turbocharged and direct-injected. It produces 188 horsepower and 177 pound-feet of torque, the latter peaking from 2,000 rpm all the way to 5,200.
The 6-speed transmission is pretty slick, but if you choose an all-wheel drive model, you’ll have to settle for a continuously-variable automatic with manual mode. It includes a Sport mode for quicker reactions to throttle input, but lacks wheel-mounted paddle shifters. Zero to 100 km/h takes 8.0 seconds; not bad, but we were expecting a quicker time. The front-drive versions are faster by about a half-second.
The Juke’s engine is both amusing and peculiar at once. Once the boost is up, which actually occurs pretty quickly, you feel like you’re catapulted from a slingshot with a very stretchy elastic band. The engine does get quite buzzy as it approaches the red line, but it’s more of a turbine-like whirl than a trashy sound.
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| The turbo 1.6-litre four produces 188 horsepower and 177 pound-feet of torque. (Photo: Michel Deslauriers/Auto123.com) |