Nissan has named its new small UK-built crossover Juke ahead of its Geneva show debut in March and October arrival in showrooms.
“The Juke will inject some much-needed dynamism into the small car segment, offering European car-buyers an alternative to the traditional, uninspiring small hatchback,” the automaker said.
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It’s the fourth crossover in Nissan’s European range and was inspired by the Qazana concept car shown at the 2009 Geneva show. It slots into the range between the Note compact family car and the highly successful Qashqai crossover.
Nissan said its customer research identified a large proportion of European small and compact car buyers whose needs were not met by what they perceived to be uninspiring and unoriginal options available to them where copycat hatchbacks dominate.
The Juke has been designed and developed to give customers an alternative to the traditional small hatchback in Europe. This philosphy worked well for the C-segment Qahqai, which replaced an uninspiring hatchback called the Almera, and had a long waiting list soon after launch.
“We know that there are a lot of customers looking for a car which combines striking design, agile handling and driving pleasure, user friendly technology but not at the expense of practicality and convenience. These unique attributes will allow Juke to occupy a unique corner of the European market,” said Nissan Europe sales and marketing head Simon Thomas.
“Nissan caught the mood of the European car-buying public with the Qashqai crossover and we’ve worked hard to study the market in the same way for Juke to be sure we meet the needs of European customers. We’re confident that Juke will bring a new generation of customers to Nissan, in the same way that Qashqai did. Our philosophy of challenging conventions with Qashqai has been a huge success. We’ve just reached the 500,000 landmark and we’re applying many of the lessons learned from Qashqai to Juke. We’re confident we’ll have another success on our hands,” added Thomas.
Juke will be manufactured alongside the Qashqai and Note at Nissan’s factory in Sunderland, north east England.
