2011 Nissan Juke: Anything But Boring

2011 Nissan Juke: Anything But Boring

By Mark Holthoff

Say what you will about the all-new 2011 Nissan Juke -- which Edmunds' Inside Line recently took for a First Drive -- but you definitely won't call it boring.
 
And if you're anything like the readers who have commented on Edmunds.com, you'll fall into one of two camps: those who find Nissan's all-new compact SUV "daring," "amusing" and "unique," or those who think it's "weird," "lumpy" and "extraordinarily ugly in every way."
 

Among the latter is reader colorado1974, who claims "I'd rather have a [Pontiac] Aztek 1000 times over," and iancar, who cries out, "My eyes, my precious eyes!"  More than one reader suggested, after seeing photos of the car's aggressive styling, renaming it the "Joke" or the "Puke."
 
Kinder reactions among the "don't like it" crowd include those of reader cz_75, who concedes that "ugly as it is, at least it isn't strange and misshapen like the [Nissan] Cube," and mountainking, who quips, "It definitely looks better as a car than most people do with a mullet."
 
Meanwhile, fans of the Juke, a somewhat less dramatic bunch, tend to offer more reasoned points of view.  For instance, reader men3z gives "Nissan props for going for it and making something completely different" and gugarci tell us: "I like it -- decent power and you can buy it with a stick."  Or, as mholly99 explains, "I'm looking for something unusual like the Cube and how the Scion xB was when it first debuted but with more interior space and a bigger engine... I think the Juke might be it."
 
Also on the plus side, reader sky17 tells us that the Juke "looks like a fun around town car" and godzilla510 asserts, "Finally, a sub-hatch from Japan with decent hp that will blow the competition away."  And phoenixc says:  "It's like Nissan is doing what Subaru forgot how to do... make fun weird cars that are practical and offer 4WD."
 
The Juke's powertrain offerings also drew an interesting mix of remarks. For instance, reader double_duece tells Nissan "thank you for... having the decency to make the manual standard"; at the same time, though, aznraptor doesn't understand why "the manual is the crappy-performing version while the CVT is the performance model."
 
Even the estimated $20,000 base price appears to be controversial.  Reader juan_mx argues that "Nissan is making a mistake for not offering a cheaper non-turbo version ($16k-$18k) to compete with the [Honda] Fit, the [Toyota] Yaris and the [Ford] Fiesta." On the other hand, bankerdanny counters that if you "compare the price and base power to the [Mini] Cooper Countryman, the Nissan seems like a screaming good deal."
 
There is one reader who seems interested in a compromise of sorts from Nissan: m89 suggests that "if they took the cool features from the Juke... and put them into cars like the new Sentra, a young man like myself might be interested."
 
And that's the word on the street.
 
Mark Holthoff is Edmunds.com's manager of customer support.

Photos by Nissan

Michelle Krebs:  is Editor-in-Chief of AutoObserver.com. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.