Pint-size JUKE treads on unloved Altima

The Nissan Juke, that oddly proportioned light hatch on a capable SUV platform, is outselling the Altima mid-sized sedan in year to date sales, according to VFACTS.

Very much a niche product, the Juke has sold 1362 cars this year, versus just 987 of the supposedly mainstream Altima mid-size sedan.

Leaving aside the respective merits of the two cars, it indicates that quirky and strange beats bland any day of the week. And if that's the case, then other mainstream models in Nissan's range are in some degree of strife too.

The Altima is supposedly receiving a brand boost by its association with V8 Supercars, but that doesn't seem to be translating in the marketplace. For the first six months of this year, it's just one sale ahead of the Skoda Octavia, which isn't currently racing in the V8 Supercars category.

In the micro segment, Micra (643) is barely ahead of Suzuki's very new Celerio (626) and is actually lagging behind the Holden Barina Spark (698), which is due for replacement early next year. It's being comprehensively outsold by Fiat 500 and Mitsubishi Mirage too.

Nissan no longer has an entrant in the light-car segment, following the demise of the Almera sedan. A car like the Nissan Invitation – a car that's a little different, but still arguably attractive – could be a good candidate in that segment, but by being built in the UK, it would be far too expensive in the local market by the time it was shipped here.

In the small car segment the Pulsar's performance is already cause for concern. At just 4101 cars sold in 2015 so far, it's nearly a thousand units in arrears of its own performance in 2014. It's barely in front of the Ford Focus (4087) and is three sales behind the Hyundai Elantra, which is a sedan only. That car's hatchback counterpart, the i30, has already notched up 15,801 sales for the year to date.

Cruze, Cerato and the venerable Lancer are all ahead of the Pulsar. And cars like the Volkswagen Golf, Mazda3 and Toyota Corolla have already reached five figures for the year so far. In 2015, Toyota has sold five Corollas for every Pulsar Nissan has pushed out the showroom doors.

"Pulsar is an area of focus for us," Nissan's General Manager for Corporate Communications, Peter Fadeyev admitted to motoring.com.au during the launch of the Infiniti QX80 last week. The Pulsar's sales decline from over 14,000 in 2013, when it first went on sale, smacks of the same steady erosion of the sales base that its predecessor, the Tiida, also endured over the course of that car's model life.

If the Pulsar is a good-but-not-great car, could things have been different with the C-segment (small) car that's available in Europe? It's an academic point, according to Fadeyev; the Euro Pulsar is not available to Nissan Australia.

And why not?

"In broad terms, cost," Fadeyev replied. "It was simply cost; you must be price-competitive in the small-car segment in Australia. The success of our competitors and the success we've enjoyed with Pulsar for many years – with that nameplate – proves that you must be cost-competitive.

"It's a price-sensitive segment, but you must also offer a rich combination of features and equipment. You can't provide, to our thinking, a vehicle that doesn't have enough equipment and is only price-competitive, or is generous in its equipment levels but isn't price-competitive. You simply need both."

Nissan's two sports cars, the 370Z and GT-R are selling in small but sustained numbers, and the Qashqai small SUV is proving that its odd name is no particular burden in the marketplace. While the Qashqai (5294 sales in 2015) is some way behind the Dualis (5572 sales for 2014) in year-to-date numbers, that shortfall is well and truly offset by the X-TRAIL, which has sold 9272 this year, versus 6442 last year.

Of Nissan's other SUVs, Pathfinder is well ahead and Patrol is only about a hundred units behind. The petrol V8 Y62 model sold 590 units last year, which is roughly on par with its monthly sales rate for as long as it has been available in this country. Fadeyev anticipates the recent repositioning of that generation of Patrol will yield stronger sales, although recent aggressive retail discounting may mask the benefits of the new pricing structure for a while yet.

"We're still in the transition between the phase before the prices were [adjusted] and the post-repositioning phase. But we did have some attractive incentives in place – for dealers and for customers for the Y62 Patrol – and how our sales performance tracks in this post-repositioning phase remains to be seen, but we're confident that we will continue at at least the current run rate, if not better."

Commercial vehicle sales (Navara) have fallen behind this year, but that's in the context of a new model arriving half-way through this year, and the old stock being run out. In short, Nissan need not be especially concerned about SUV and LCV sales, but passenger cars pose a problem.

Peter Fadeyev doesn't characterise the lower sales in 2015 (32,950 versus 33,155) as a brand image problem in itself. And as for the Juke? According to Fadeyev the quirky cross-over SUV is simply accomplishing its mission.

"The Juke, fundamentally, is an excellent car. And yes, admittedly it does have a polarising effect in how people respond to its exterior styling. In my opinion that's a good thing, because if people like you, that's great. If people don't like your styling, well then you're engaged with them – and you have every opportunity to turn their thinking around and possibly have them like you. That definitely occurs in our dealerships when people drive the car.

"But if people have a neutral opinion of you then that can be far more of a challenge, because it's hard to engage people when they don't consider you."

But it's that very engagement the Juke is achieving that seems to be the missing links for other models in the local Nissan portfolio.