DownsideUpDesign

Oh how I love the run-up to motor shows! With Geneva but a matter of weeks away, Nissan has revealed the Juke, a productionised version of the cute Qazana @JoeSimpson and I raved about at Geneva last year. Sadly, the car above is not the Juke. It’s my fantasy Juke, with the suicide doors of the Qazana rightfully reinstated.

Although I moved the shut-line back all of 100mm, the difference (for me at least) is night-and-day, making the wonderful Juke just that little bit more insane by keeping a whole lot more coupé in the mix. It’s a subtle change in appearance – if not in engineering – that I sorely wish we could have seen in the real thing.

At the end of the day, it matters little. I love this little box just fine and, after the slightly awkward second-album-syndrome Cube, the Juke puts Nissan back on top of the small car game.

Third time’s clearly the charm with Kia’s baby SUV, the Sportage.

The first generation of the Sportage impressed with it’s cheapness, off-road prowess and… well that’s about it*.  The second one, if we’re honest, had even less to recommend it: in a nod to changing market expectations of small SUVs, it dropped any semblance of off-roadability and was simply cheap.

1st and 2nd Generation Kia Sportage (click to enlarge)

Yet given the strides Kia’s been making in the design department of late (the conservative but nicely resolved Koup, Soul and Sorento all come to mind), the new Sportage was always going to represent a significant stylistic departure from its dowdy predecessors. In fact, having looked over the press shots, I’d go do far as to say that the new Sportage is the best resolved Kia to date and another indicator of just how serious the brand is about conquering the middle of the market. Read the rest of this entry »