My local dealer reckons they've sold 35 already although I've yet to see a single one on the road.
Personally, I think it's the dark cabin (needs a full length glass roof Civic GT style) and low powered engine that are killing the sales. As I said elsewhere, I drove the Vitara 1.4S this morning and in terms of performance, it was a far livelier and more sporty drive than the 1.2T with ride comfort and handling on a par, all for £7K less than the top Dynamic, with lower emissions and better economy. Plus it had the advantage of multi-mode 4x4, diff lock and hill descent control despite the lower price.
Out of the two, given the way it was on a par in many areas and it drove better, I'd buy the Vitara every time. I could live with the hard plastics simply because the driving experience was so much better.
If it's true that sales are slow, then I expect there will be some big discounting soon.
In my opinion, Toyota seriously misjudged the sporty younger buyers market thinking they'd buy a car with 114bhp or a Prius engine!
The Juke is one of Nissan's best selling cars and even the standard Juke has 190bhp, with the sporty Nismo having 220 bhp.
Toyota's best option in my opinion, is fit a glass roof, replace the Nimh batteries with Li and de-restrict the electric motors to release all those extra horses, fit a manual box a standard with CVT as the option, and consider uprating the 4wd system to something more useful in winter, plus lower the price. Then in my opinion, they'd have a car with a wider appeal.
