My Mother in Law bought a Juke a couple of months ago and has now gone on holiday and left my wife and I with her car. Although I had travelled in it before I hadn't actually driven it and I think I will be driving it as little as possible....the 5 speed gearbox is truly awful!

When I first jumped in I put it into reverse and thought it wasn't going into gear properly. However it turns out all the gears are very, very short and crunchy but not in a nice sporty way. My first thoughts were that the gearbox had no oil in it but I googled it and on a juke forum they are all saying about how notchy and crunchy the 5-speed box was. Apart from that, the actual drive was nice and smooth (in between gear changes) but then you get out and close the door with cheap and flimsy plastic handles.

So not impressed at all with the little Nissan and if anyone you know is thinking of getting one and can't see past the 'styling' ,cheap finish, non existent rear headroom and tiny boot. Tell them to do themselves a favour and at least go for the spec with the decent six speed box!

Edited 10 May, 201115 yr by dds

I think they got the name wrong,should start with a P and not a J.

I think they got the name wrong,should start with a P and not a J.

Naaaah, It's the u that's wrong. It's missing the top, and should have been an o.

My Mother in Law bought a Juke a couple of months ago and has now gone on holiday and left my wife and I with her car. Although I had travelled in it before I hadn't actually driven it and I think I will be driving it as little as possible....the 5 speed gearbox is truly awful!

When I first jumped in I put it into reverse and thought it wasn't going into gear properly. However it turns out all the gears are very, very short and crunchy but not in a nice sporty way. My first thoughts were that the gearbox had no oil in it but I googled it and on a juke forum they are all saying about how notchy and crunchy the 5-speed box was. Apart from that, the actual drive was nice and smooth (in between gear changes) but then you get out and close the door with cheap and flimsy plastic handles.

So not impressed at all with the little Nissan and if anyone you know is thinking of getting one and can't see past the 'styling' ,cheap finish, non existent rear headroom and tiny boot. Tell them to do themselves a favour and at least go for the spec with the decent six speed box!

Glad you liked it.

Nice little review!

Andy

Been seeing quite a few of these recently, for example two white ones past me on the A64 yesterday evening. Think they look OK in white but any other colour I've seen so far reminds me of a Matchbox toy

TP

I took friends to test drive a Cashcow and a Yeti a while back. They gave the Puke one look and said no thanks as the boot was too small - they loved the look of the thing though. But then we test drove a Cashcow. I was a passenger and even so I sensed the same from the gearbox as you just described. Horrid. It was my friend Karen's first comment too (she was driving): horrid gearbox and that was it for the Cashcow. No thanks.

It really does underline the necessity of a test drive when buying a new car. When we were going through the process of checking out & test driving different cars. One of the sales guys said that he was amazed at how many people didn't actually test drive before signing on the dotted line.

If I had decided on the Cashcow and hadn't test drove it, I can only imagine how disappointed I would been when I did drive the thing. I'm really surprised that there hasn't been more said about this gearbox in the motoring press for Jukes, Cashcows etc.

When I test drove the special edition VW Golf Twist which was a normally aspirated 1.4. I was shocked at the performance of the engine on a motorway. We hit a slight incline in 5th gear and the speed rapidly started dropping off from 70 with my foot to the floor. The engine was adequate around town but would have been woefully inadequate fully loaded going away on a long journey.