Nissan’s joke with Juke
Under - Design, Industrial DesignYahoo Cars today published an article on ‘Top five cars coming in 2010’ on display at the Geneva Motor Show which is up till 14th March.
At first sight I couldn’t believe that Nissan could do something like this! I’m talking about the thing called Juke. After the elegantly done Qashqai, that I truly admire and driven myself, how come Nissan could venture into something so controversial looking. Seriously, just look at it.
Heavily inspired by their ‘Qazana’ concept car, about which autoblog.com says ‘Nissan Qazana is so bizarre it almost looks French’, Juke has a ‘heavy dose of sportiness’. Although designed and built in Sunderland (UK) like Qashqai, Juke is a very Japanese car design to me than anything else. Technology apart, automobile design is something where only few specialize in. If Nissan is trying to repeat the Qashqai phenomenon here then I don’t think things would be exactly the same with this model – Qashqai was bold and Juke is awkwardly bold.

Nissan Qazana Concept Car - compare this to the above Juke
I personally like the ‘bizarre’ Qazana design, the problems that I can pick are mostly around the consumer version where front part is very badly adopted. The multiple front lights, out of which two are protruding, and their overall composition making it impossible to focus on Juke’s ‘face’ hence the overall design losing its impact. Despite the exaggerated masculine body the overall look-n-feel is very subtle compare to Qazana’s sculpted body. Every time I look at Juke I think of this.

A concept lost in the making - Qazana/Juke Comparison

Qazana/Juke Comparison - another view
Qazana’s overall design has been downgraded into Juke making it a weirdly looking car from a distinctive one (ok, being weird is sort of distinctive). The above pictures show how the Qazana ‘concept’ is lost in the making. Those two protruding lights and their proportionate relation with the other two front lights is missing in Juke along with overall slick, smart yet masculine and sporty shape characteristics. I’m not going into every minute detail to illustrate how much is lost but Juke is like a novice repainting a master piece.