What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

Titter ye not, it’s built for the clown about town ^{Nissan Juke 1.6 DIG-T Tekna}

To this day, I remain baffled by the Ford Scorpio because at some point someone must have walked into an important board meeting and said, ‘Well, everyone. This is what it’s going to look like.’

Why did no one present say, ‘Are you joking?’ or, ‘Have you gone mad?’ or, ‘Take some gardening leave, you imbecile’? They obviously just sat there thinking, Yes, we have had cars in the past that were designed to look like sharks and cars that were designed to look like big cats. So why should we not now have a car that looks like a wide-mouthed frog?

It’s strange. I know who designed almost every single car in recent times. I know who did the Lamborghini Countach, VW Golf and Volvo 850. I know several people who claim to have done the Aston Martin DB9. But nobody in all my years has ever put their hand up and said, ‘Yes. It was me. I did the Scorpio.’

I bet you would have a similar struggle if you set out to find the man who did the Toyota Yaris Verso – the only car ever made that is five times taller than it is long. I pulled up alongside one yesterday and studied the driver for some time. Do you realize, I wondered, how utterly ridiculous you look in that?

Then there’s the Pontiac Aztek, which was unusual in that it managed to look wrong from every single angle. Normally, even the most hopeless designer gets one tiny feature right by accident – the rear tail-lights or the C pillar, for instance. Even the Triumph TR7 had a nice steering wheel. But the Aztek looked like one of those cardboard cities you find beneath underpasses in Mexico.

And let’s not forget the SsangYong Rodius. Plainly, they set out to build a coupé and then decided at the last minute that what they actually wanted was a removal van. And then, when those two concepts had been nailed together in the most unholy merger since Caligula fell in love with his horse, they realized that the only wheels they could afford were the size of Smarties.

It’s easy, when you look at a SsangYong, to imagine that the designer simply doesn’t know what he’s doing. But that ain’t necessarily so. Remember the Musso? That was as awful to behold as a frostbitten penis and yet, amazingly, it was styled by the same man who designed that old warhorse the Aston Martin Vantage and the Bentley Continental R.

The problem is that there’s a language to car design. Some of the language is written down. Ideally, the wheels should be half the height of the car, for example. But mostly, it’s a dark art. All I know is that the car must look like it’s capable of great speed, or else it looks wrong.

Look at the kink at the bottom of every BMW’s rearmost pillar. The one between the back window and the back door. It’s got a little kink and that makes the car look like it’s pushing forwards, straining at the leash. BMW is also very good at making the body look like it’s been stretched to fit over the wheels. As if there’s barely enough skin to contain all the muscle.

This doesn’t just apply to sporty cars, either. Look at the new Vauxhall Astra. It’s a handsome thing because it’s all straight lines and sharp angles. There’s a whiff of the fast patrol boat. And that gives a sense of howling turbochargers and sea spray – even if the engine under the bonnet is a miserable diesel.

This brings me on to Nissan. A few years ago, it decided to try to make a car that didn’t look fast. The company reckoned that in a world of road rage, traffic and simmering rage, it would be good to have a car that was friendly and unthreatening. So it produced the Micra.

I hated that car. It had the sort of face you wanted to punch. And because it was ‘happy’, it was bought by the sort of people who were never in much of a hurry. I’d love to know how much of my life has been stolen by Nissan and its Micra experiment. One day, I may send it a bill.

But in the meantime, the company has changed tack again and come up with the Juke. It’s not ugly by any means but it is, without any question or shadow of doubt, the stupidest-looking machine to see the light of day since the Ronco Buttoneer.

What were they thinking of? Why, for instance, are its rear wheel arches bigger than those you would find on a modern tractor, even though the wheels are the size of Polo mints? And why are the front lights mounted on top of the bonnet? It’s all completely ridiculous.

I first encountered it at Heathrow airport early one Monday morning. The office said it would leave a car for me in the valet parking bay and so there it was, sitting among the Maseratis and the Mercs, like a big comedy hat at a funeral.

At first, I assumed it was some kind of electric car, and that filled me with horror and dread as a busy week lay ahead and I really didn’t have the time to spend eight hours a day looking for somewhere to charge it up and then another eight hours drinking coffee while the batteries replenished themselves with juicy electricity. Made from burning Russian gas.

Happily, as I turned the key, I was greeted with the welcome sound of internal combustion. So why, I wondered, have they made it look so mad? Perhaps, I thought, it’s a four-wheel-drive crossover vehicle. Well, for sure, there is an all-wheel-drive version but the model I had was based on a front-drive Micra.

So maybe, then, it has the silly body because it’s somehow capable of doubling up as a bus. Nope. It has seating for just five and a boot that is surprisingly small.

Then I noticed something odd. In the middle of the dash is quite the most baffling onboard computer I’ve ever seen. It tells you every single thing you don’t need to know, including, wait for it, how much g you are experiencing at any given moment. So this idiotic high-riding car with its small wheels, street lighting and arches from a Massey Ferguson thinks it’s a jet fighter.

It really isn’t. Yes, the engine’s a turbocharged 1.6 that produces 187 horsepower, but it doesn’t ever feel fast. Or exciting in any way. I’m not suggesting that it is nasty to drive or that it kept crashing into trees, but it’s not good, either. It is just some car.

And that means I’m stuck. Normally I can tell what sort of person might be interested in a particular car and I try to tailor my conclusion to meet their specific requirements. But I’ve trawled my memory banks and I can’t remember ever meeting anyone who might be interested in buying a car that looks absolutely stupid.

The best I can come up with, therefore, is this: if you just want a normal five-seat hatchback, buy a Golf or a Ford Focus. If, on the other hand, you want a normal five-seat hatchback but you enjoy people pointing at you and laughing, then the Juke is ideal.