NISSAN JUDO, 1987
The problem with SUVs... OK, one of the problems with SUVs is they’re quite dull. Some are fun to drive, though not as fun as a proper car, while others offer neat interior parlour tricks that make life a smidge more tolerable. Nissan’s Juke offered rare style but was sadly rare on substance too. If it was a person it would wear a motorbike jacket even though it didn’t own a motorbike.
It wasn’t always meant to be like this though – when Nissan’s earlier designers sketched out their fever dreams of a glorious future they showed up at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1987 with the Judo concept. Apparently no one told Nissan judo means ‘the way of gentleness’, because this car would’ve hit the market mercilessly hard.
Nissan baldly described its creation as an ‘all-terrain vehicle with cargo space’ – refreshing now, in an age where marketeers promise a cancer cure from an electric city car. There was so much going that it would have been impossible not to find something you liked on this SUV-meets-pickup-meets-roadster-coupe. The delightful telephone dial wheels, or those front lights, which combine a smidge of Alpine A110 with a touch of Ford RS200. It’s also probably where Pixar got inspiration for the aliens in Toy Story.
The best bit was the whacky hardtop, which shimmies backwards to open up a world of fun. Indeed, this is the vehicle the Skoda Felicia Fun dreamed of being. The boot was exciting too, with side-hinged hatches, and a spare wheel that swung out of the rear bumper. There was even a winch hidden in there too; the Judo was not merely a supermarket car park poseur.
The interior is a miasma of grey plastic, much like everything from the period. It’s minimalist, other than the infotainment and ventilation controls arranged in a square slab in the middle of the dash. One-piece corduroy seats are a particular delight. What a great place to be, roof rolled back and the sun on your bald spot.
The Judo got a 2.0-litre turbocharged inline four from Cedric and Gloria, which sounds like a championship-winning ballroom partnership from the Eighties, but is actually a pair of saloons from the Nissan back catalogue. A heady 207bhp and 195lb ft of torque was sent to all four wheels through a five-speed manual box. The Judo had the chops to back up what its styling promised.
If the Judo was being sold on well known shopping sites it would have a box underneath saying ‘People who looked at this car went on to buy: the Suzuki X-90, the Toyota RAV4 and the 3dr Land Rover Freelander’, but none of those bad lads arrived until at least 1994 – or 2010 if you consider the Juke the heir to the Judo’s intended throne. The latter could have been a true pioneer, instead we ended up with its glossy underachieving millennial nephew.