SA Road Tests

Welcome

This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
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*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.


We and the 2012 Nissan Juke 1,6 DIG-T Tekna make music together

Funky, cute, youthful and controversial

Published in Weekend Witness Motoring on Saturday January 7, 2012

Wife and trainer both think it’s cute. A friend was less impressed – “What’s with those hinge bulges in the roof?” she wanted to know. Older guys we asked just shook their heads in disbelief. The Juke is that kind of car. It’s funky, cute, youthful, ugly or controversial, depending on one’s outlook, but never bland or boring. 

Nissan says it took the best elements of SUVs and sports sedans and combined them - roomy yet compact, robust yet dynamic and practical yet playful - contradictory qualities, but together in the Juke they create something special. It stands high like an SUV with 180 mm of ground clearance, but it never feels top-heavy. The lower body is chunky and aggressive, but its top half is pure sports coupé with narrow windows and a downward-tapering roofline. Curves abound and for fans of retro sportiness, how about those round headlamps with plain glass lenses, that look rather like the aircraft landing lights fitted to rally cars in the ‘sixties and ‘seventies?

The surprises don’t end there. Imagine a centre console painted dark silver, in our test car, to match the top of the gearshift, the door switch panels, climate control knobs and ventilator and instrument surrounds? Nissan says it’s reminiscent of a motorbike fuel tank. The Juke’s favourite party trick, though, is the I-CON control panel. With the ‘Climate’ switch selected, you see the usual array of aircon, vent and fan speed buttons. Push ‘D-Mode’ and the climate buttons morph into selectors for three driving modes – normal, sport and eco, complete with descriptions of the engine, steering and air conditioning profiles chosen for each.

Briefly, Juke comes with a choice of two Alliance 1,6-litre engines. Acenta and Acenta+ models are fitted with a 1598 cc naturally aspirated HR16DE motor producing 86 kW. Tekna-trimmed models, with or without leather upholstery, are given a 1618 cc, MR16DDT turbocharged and dual-intercooled powerhouse developing 140 kW and 240 Nm. Nissan speaks of DIG-T – this simply means direct injection gasoline, turbo charged – easy enough once translated. We drove a cloth-upholstered DIG-T.

The car is built on the Alliance’s B-platform used in many of its smaller cars, but tracks are widened to 1525 mm for a firmer stance, with front suspension mounted on a new cradle-type subframe that enhances stability.  Apart from that, the basic platform was widened, lengthened and made stronger yet lighter, to improve safety and refinement.

Standard kit includes the usual ABS with EBD and EBA, a five-speed manual gearbox, vehicle dynamic control, six airbags, ISOFix anchorages, kiddie locks, front fog lights, powered windows, and mirrors that fold away when parked. Turbocharged versions have six-speed transmissions, automatic headlamps and smart keys with push-button starting. We like this.  There is no need to twist a key; just prod the button once to get the cycle started, then get on with other things, like applying one’s seatbelt.

Enough of the technical stuff; what’s it actually like?  Starting from the back, the boot is about average for a small car at 251 litres, with a fairly high loading sill. How do we describe this delicately for a family webpage? Halfway between knees and waist, about does it. The 60:40 rear seatbacks fold completely flat and the party trick here is a removable tool tray under the loose boot floorboard. Its two open compartments accept a 15” laptop satchel and a carry-on airline bag.

The back seat area is best reserved for shorter friends, as the sloping roofline mentioned earlier, takes its toll. Knee room qualifies as ‘just enough’ and the same applies to foot space. Doors are also quite narrow, making entry and exit for the larger-framed, a bit of a chore. 

In front, both seats adjust mechanically with the driver’s chair going up and down as well. Trim is a very pleasant faux-suede and cloth mixture, with the seats being both comfortable and supportive. The leather-trimmed steering wheel has tilt adjustment only, with cruise, sound and phone controls built in. Some reviewers complain about hard plastic on the dash and interior, but it’s attractively coloured and decently fitted, so it works quite well.

For day-to-day driving, most would be quite content to select Eco mode and go about their business. It’s that usable. The only proviso is that, in really hot weather, the aircon in Eco mode struggles a bit. Normal mode is much brisker, working well for those endowed with less patience and needing a measure of ‘turbo boost’ in the chilling department. Sport mode with its sharpened steering and engine response, is actually very close to Normal in practice.

Because this car is promoted as a mini SUV-crossover, we took it out on a fairly rough provincial road with lots of potholes and washboard erosion. It was firmly comfortable, tracked well and didn’t rattle or squeak – surprisingly good for a small car in fact.

Would we have one? It’s very rounded, with some odd shapes and those lights make it look almost like a frog. But it’s a Kermit-cute little frog and it goes like the wind through the willows, so we probably would.

The numbers
Price: R253 000
Engine: 1618 cc, four cylinder, turbocharged
Power: 140 kW at 5600 rpm
Torque: 240 Nm at 5000 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 8,0 seconds
Maximum speed: About 200 km/h (US test)
Real life fuel consumption: about 9,5 l/100 km
Tank: 46 litres
Warranty: 3 years/100 000 km with roadside assistance
Service plan: 3 years/90 000 km at 15 000 km intervals
Optional extended warranty: 6 years/150 000 km



What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.

What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so I do actually exist.

I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!

Comments?
Want to ask a question, comment or just tell me you thoroughly disagree with what I say? That's your privilege, because if everybody agreed on everything, the world would be a boring place. All I ask is that you remain calm, so please blow off a little steam before venting too vigorously. Email me from here