Why Nissan Discontinued The Juke In The US (And What Replaced It)

Japanese automaker Nissan may not command the same prestige in the U.S. as its compatriots Toyota and Honda, but one thing is undeniable: Nissan has been a significant player in the American automotive scene since the 1960s. While it has mostly stuck to launching conventional, sensible-looking cars in the U.S. market, Nissan has, on several occasions, come up with some of the most iconic — and occasionally unconventional — vehicles to grace U.S. garages.

Notable examples include the Nissan Skyline GT-R, arguably one of the most well-known models in the company's lineup, and iconic sports cars like the Nissan 370Z and the Nissan 240SX. In fact, a closer look at Nissan and you could end up with a long list of really important Nissan cars of all time. Nissan's experiments with styling have also resulted in vehicles that do not particularly fit into the category of good-looking cars. In fact, the company has a long list of vehicles that look quirky, strange, and borderline ugly.

When thinking of weird-looking Nissan-made cars, we couldn't help but think of the Nissan Juke; a strange-looking subcompact crossover SUV sold in the U.S. market between 2010 and 2017. Toward the end of its run in the U.S., sales of the Nissan Juke started plummeting each passing year, which some believe was primarily due to the unconventional, polarizing looks of the car. This led to the eventual cancelation of the vehicle in the U.S., where it was replaced with the Nissan Kicks. The story of the Nissan Juke and the eventual arrival of the Nissan Kicks in the U.S. market is interesting in itself, and eventually resulted in the arrival of the newest 2025 Nissan Kicks, which is not that bad looking vehicle after all.

The Nissan Juke was introduced in 2010 for the 2011 model year, as a small Crossover to complement its existing range of crossover vehicles like the Nissan Murano and the Qashqai. The quirky design of the Juke was heavily inspired by the Qazana concept car Nissan showcased in 2009.

In the U.S. market, the Nissan Juke launched with a 1.6-liter, four-cylinder, direct injection gasoline engine that made 188 hp of power at 5,600 rpm while making a peak torque of 177 lb-ft. The car was offered with two transmission options: a six-speed manual transmission and a Xtronic CVT transmission. Nissan offered the 2011 Juke in three trim levels: a base S, a mid-tier SV, and a top-of-the-line SL that had all the bells and whistles.

The Juke received a series of updates during its U.S. sales run. A major change came to the lineup with the 2013 model when Nissan launched a more powerful Juke NISMO variant that had higher power figures of 197 hp. Nissan would continue to update the Juke with incremental feature updates and new color options over the next few years.

The next major update to the lineup came with the 2015 model, which saw the debut of the sportier Juke NISMO RS model. A year later, the 2016 model saw the NISMO RS variant getting an even more powerful engine. Nissan would update the Juke for one more year, before pulling the plug after the 2017 model.

Despite its polarizing looks, the sales numbers of the Juke were encouraging right from the start. In 2010, sales figures for the Nissan Juke exceeded 8,000 units (8,639 units, to be precise) in the U.S. In 2011, Nissan sold 35,886 Jukes in the U.S., a number which rose to 39,305 units in 2012. In the two years following that — in 2013 and 2014 — the company sold 38,157 and 38,184 units of the Nissan Juke, respectively. These numbers were only marginally lower than the peak sales figures achieved in 2012.

Starting in 2015, however, sales figures of the Juke started to show a sharp dip. The 2015 sales figures were down by more than 11,000 units, compared to the 2014 numbers at just 27,121 units. The following years saw the numbers go down even further, hitting 19,577 units in 2016 and 10,157 units in 2017. The 48% decline in U.S. sales numbers between 2016 and 2017 was the final straw, leading to Nissan pulling the plug on the Nissan Juke only seven years after it was released in the country.

Several reports claimed that the supposedly "divisive" looks of the car led to weak sales, leading to the subsequent cancellation of the Juke from the U.S. market. However, the Juke's supposedly divisive design did not cause that major an issue in the European market, where the car continued to sell in impressive numbers. In fact, 2017 alone saw Nissan sell more than 95,000 units of the Juke in Europe. The very same year witnessed Nissan Europe celebrate the assembly of the millionth Nissan Juke at the company's plant in Sunderland, U.K. Nissan had other plans for the U.S. market, though.

One year after the announcement of the 2017 Nissan Juke, Nissan surprised everyone in the U.S. with the launch of a new compact crossover called the Nissan Kicks for the 2018 model year. The launch of this new car coincided with the yearly update cycle of the Nissan Juke, thereby indicating that the Kicks is, indeed, a less quirky successor to the Nissan Juke. 

At launch, the Nissan Kicks had a starting MSRP of $18,000, undercutting the older Nissan Juke by $1,000. At the time of its U.S. debut, the Nissan Kicks was a fairly new car, having been first introduced in Brazil just two years earlier. In hindsight, the more neutral design of the Nissan Kicks seemed to have worked for Nissan, with the entry-level crossover notching up decent sales numbers in the U.S. market — especially compared to the Juke.

In the first year of its U.S. launch, Nissan sold a healthy 23,312 units of the Kicks, with the numbers jumping to well over 58,000 units in 2019 and 2020. The Nissan Kicks hit its peak sales numbers of 82,960 units in 2021. The car continues to sell in decent numbers in the U.S., with sales regularly exceeding the 50,000 mark every year since 2021.

Since its launch, Nissan has updated the Kicks several times, with a facelifted model coming in 2020. In March 2024, the company gave the biggest update by finally offering AWD in the 2025 model.