Juke prospects for Oz improve

The opportunity for the Nissan Juke to go on sale in Australia has opened up, following the strong performance of the Aussie dollar in recent months. Nissan had more or less written off the K12 Micra-based crossover, but it's back on the 'for consideration' list maintained by the company's local product planners.

"We looked at it in Geneva," the head of Corporate Communications for Nissan Australia, Jeff Fisher, told the Carsales Network earlier this week, "[but] the numbers didn't add up..."

Nissan has a target price in mind for the Juke, should it come here, and that's shaped by currency exchange rates, among other things. The Juke, which is Nissan's answer to the Toyota Urban Cruiser, is a Japanese product built for European markets -- in Europe.

That has made it too expensive to bring here, "but things have moved a bit since mid-year," said Fisher during Nissan's 4WD Panorama media event on Monday. The decision to go ahead with importation or stick with the status quo won't be formally made until next year at the earliest, according to Fisher.

"It's only just gone on sale [in Europe], as of about two weeks ago," Fisher mentioned as an aside. Apparently the factory has been inundated with forward orders for the new model and any export program beyond Europe is on the back-burner for the time being, leaving Nissan Australia a little time to see how things pan out before committing one way or another.

Exchange rates aren't the only factor in the decision-making process. While the Juke has a tangible competitor overseas in the Urban Cruiser, the Toyota is not available in Australia either, so Nissan is forced to look at such unlikely rivals in the light/small-car segments as the Toyota Rukus and the Kia Soul. Other than styling novelty, the fluently-styled Juke appears to have little in common with the angular Rukus or Soul -- cars that are more likely to compare with Nissan's Cube. But Nissan has nothing else close in size and market appeal to provide a benchmark for the Juke. Fisher advised that the sales numbers for the Rukus and the Soul in the local market to date are not encouraging. The figures for the Rukus in particular are an argument against importation of the Juke, a car that will be seen very much as a niche-market model, rather than a mainstream, volume-selling car.

But the Soul, as a vehicle that serves to build the Kia brand, could be an argument in favour of the Juke coming here. While the Kia sells in negligible numbers, Fisher suggested that Nissan might consider bringing the Juke in as a loss-leader -- also with the aim of building the brand and expanding sales growth in Australia by whatever means available.

During the media event on Monday, Nissan Australia MD, Dan Thompson spoke of the company's "aspirations and ambitions" to be the number one full-line importer in Australia. That would require Nissan to overtake Mazda, Hyundai and Mitsubishi. Thompson said that the company was now "moving into the aggressive growth phase of the plan," by which is referring to Nissan's GT2012 program.

Juke may be a small, but significant part of that plan -- and the "aggressive growth phase", to use Thompson's expression. It's tempting to think, on the basis of what Thompson and Fisher said, that the Juke might be sold at a loss to Nissan Australia of $2000 a unit, but the company is so very confident in its current and upcoming products that such an idea seems a tactic of last resort.

Either the Juke can sell profitably on its own merits, or it's not worth importing...

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