Nismo Has Injected The Juke With Fun, But They Should Have Used A Bigger Syringe

One of the latest trends we’ve been seeing in the niche-tastic ranges of many car companies is hot, compact SUVs and crossovers. At the pointy end of the market, there are the likes of the 355bhp Mercedes GLA 45 AMG and the 400bhp Porsche Macan Turbo, but you’ll need over £40k for the Merc, and damn near £60k for the Porsche. So what if you don’t have quite that cash, and want something with more hot hatch rather than supercar-bothering performance? That’s where the Nissan Juke Nismo comes in.

The standard Juke is an oddly styled thing which is forever dividing opinion, but the Nissan performance bods at Nismo have given the crossover a subtle but noticeably sportier makeover, which is reasonably effective. In fact, CT readers recently voted the Juke Nismo RS - this car’s quicker but visually identical brother - as hot. In the white finish of our test car, though, the Juke’s fussy design features are a little more obvious - sticking to a darker colour is advisable.

Happily, things are better on the inside. You get a lovely set of Nismo-badged sports seats, and lots of neat touches that make a big overall difference to the interior: Alcantara trim on the steering wheel and door cards, a red rev-counter, and one of the coolest centre consoles I’ve ever seen. The buttons on the lower half have dual functions, either controlling the different driving modes, or the climate control functions. Flick a switch, and they all change. Magic.

So far so good, but when you head out for a drive, the Nismo’d Juke starts to reveal its flaws. With 197bhp and 184lb ft of torque (10bhp more than the standard version) sent through the front wheels, this Juke promises to be decently swift, with a 7.8 second 0-62mph time and a top speed of 134mph. But it never really feels all that quick. It gets off the line well enough, and there’s a nice scrabble from the front tyres when you chuck it into second gear, but after that the drama ends.

It’s also a very weedy sounding engine; it’s only a 1.6-litre, but with a plethora of much meatier dinky turbocharged engines now available in other small performance cars, we’ve come to expect a lot more. And then there’s the throttle response, which doesn’t feel anywhere near sharp enough.

The car fares a little better in the corners, where the firmer dampers used on the Nismo version keep it nicely composed, while the steering is quick, if a little light. Driving swiftly on a country road with such a high driving position is an odd experience, but an intriguing one; you’re given great visibility with which to get the right line through a bend or overtake dawdling drivers on the straights.

The trade-off with that firm suspension is that you end up with a ride that can border on jarring, depending on the road surface. It’s fine on smoother stretches of tarmac, particularly motorways, but when you’re doing a 70mph cruise, the Nismo sits at an economy-killing 3000rpm. Official combined fuel economy figures sit at 40mpg, but on a long journey a disappointing number in the mid-30s is more realistic.

The Juke Nismo is very much a mixed bag, so at this point, we’d probably recommend something else as a better alternative. The Juke doesn’t really have anything in the way of direct rivals, however, the only only alternative being the Kia Pro Ceed GT, despite the latter car being a conventional hatch and not a crossover. At £20,000 versus the Juke’s £20,500 it’s similarly priced, and like the Juke, it’s not as fast as you’d hope. The Kia also lacks drama in the way it drives.

For us, the Nissan just about pips the Kia; fuel economy is marginally higher, build quality is better and the residual values healthier.

There’s no denying that the Juke ticks lots of practical boxes, and it’s quite well equipped too. If you’re tempted, just make sure you don’t go in expecting a performance car, as you’ll be left feeling disappointed. Hopefully the Juke Nismo RS - on sale soon with more power and a limited-slip differential - will hit the spot.