Byline: WENDY WARREN KEEBLER
SINCE 1967, SAYS WEBSTER'S, the word "juke" has meant "to fake out of position (as in football)." A few decades earlier, it referred to places for eating, drinking and dancing. And before that, especially in the West Indies, it meant, um, another kind of activity.
It seems that in naming its new compact SUV, Nissan was going for the fun. Depend-ing on your outlook and the openness of your mind, you might say it met that goal.
Let's get the obvious out of the way first: that wacky exterior shape. It's a bold, daring design in a segment that generally rewards convention in terms of a two-box form. We find the look of the Juke vastly entertaining but rather polarizing and perhaps not terribly commercial, much like that of its near-rhyming sibling, the Cube, which AutoWeek had in its long-term fleet recently ("Kicked to the Cube," AW, Dec. 6, 2010).
One well-traveled car-guy friend describes the Juke as a "Tokyo car," saying that you are impressed with the little guy when you see it coming straight on, but as it drives past and you catch sight of that rear end, "it's, like, huh?"
That said, no fewer than both of this magazine's assistant art directors dig its appearance. With its "cartoonish contours," one says, "the Juke pushes the styling envelope, and pushes it well."
The car's interior is a bit wild and woolly, too, with bright-colored accents and a center-stack screen that switches from a climate-control readout to a vehicledynamics report at the touch of a button. The g meter might be silly, with no numbers on the scale to indicate actual forces, but serious drivers might find it handy to help keep the car balanced during extreme maneuvers. We also get a kick out of being able to see the turn signals on the front corners from the driver's seat. One negative on the inside is that cargo space and rear-seat room are fairly cramped.
The fun factor also applies to driving the Juke. Power levels from the 1.6-liter, 188-hp turbo four-cylinder are hardly punchy but pretty good, and the car sets its rear end down in a pleasing (but not egregious) squat when we hammer the throttle. The CVT, slapstick shifter and sport settings seem to make the most of it all. The all-wheel drive helps lay down the power without any trace of torque steer. Steering is light at low speeds and tautens as the Juke goes faster, with a noticeable bump in effort when sport mode is engaged.
We could see using normal mode in stop-and-go commuter driving and eco mode on long trips to save fuel, but otherwise, sport is the way to go. It boosts the peppiness of the engine, the reactions and gear holding of the tranny and the responsiveness of the steering. As one AW editor points out, sometimes this stuff is just for show, making little discernible difference in driving characteristics, but that doesn't seem true of the Juke.
The same editor gushes that the Juke is the coolest vehicle he drove in 2010: "I love this crazy little bug."
Hmm, bug? As in Beetle? Judging by some owners on an Internet forum who are entertaining themselves by naming their Jukes (one calls his "Kim Kardashian" for obvious rear-end-related reasons; another has dubbed his "Precious," as in Lord of the Rings; a poetic soul likes the name "Puke"), there might be a fun-and-affection tie between the Juke and the Volkswagen Beetle (old or new). The entertainment value of a Mini also comes to mind.
It will be interesting to see how the wild and crazy Juke fares in a milquetoast marketplace.
Copyright 2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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