You know it. Nissan knows it.
Consumers are fleeing cars in favor of high-riding crossovers. And the Rogue Sport is another one.
Despite the name, Nissan’s newest utility is less Rogue Jr. and more overseas transplant. Nissan America adapted the Qashqai, available in global markets since 2006, with a new name to meet North American tastes (though not in Canada, where it’ll still use its Turkic nomenclature). The renaming ensures we can pronounce it (and Nissan can preserve its Star Wars connection). More importantly, it hitches the new crossover to Nissan’s best selling nameplate.
Rogue sales surged 15 percent to 330,000 units in the U.S. last year, representing nearly one out of four Nissans sold. With the Rogue Sport, Nissan slots a crossover between the successful Rogue and the aging Juke, and connects the new crossover to one of the most successful nameplates in Nissan history.
The 172-inch-long Rogue Sport is within a couple inches in overall length of the new Jeep Compass and Toyota C-HR, and neatly splits the difference between the 185-inch-long Rogue and the 162-inch-long Juke. It also shares more than just a striking visual resemblance to its larger stalemate thanks to a shared platform.
The two-row, five-passenger crossover gets a 141-horsepower 2.0-liter four (as opposed to the 2.5-liter four-cylinder equipped Rogue) mated to a Xtronic CVT transmission. As one might expect, this is a front-wheel-drive vehicle with optional all-wheel drive.
Nissan is going where the consumers are. In this case, that means slicing its crossover offerings thinner than fleet profit margins.
Assembled in Japan, the Rogue Sport will be available in familiar S, SV, and SL trim levels. Pricing has not yet been announced, but the Rogue Sport should arrive at dealers and rental lots this spring.
Like with a ’47 Chevy we will enter these and drive them to places of working, sleeping, f*cking, eating and playing until we require a fresh one.
The homogenization of peoples and cultures under the aegis of white Western tech, medicine and nutrition has resulted* in universally similar skeletal growth for which the ’47 Chevy’s ergos represent a sweet spot and this current shiny popcan & plastic high-assed iteration will be happily received.
*until we’ve completed our die-back and mooslems wreck what’s left.
I predict this will be a huge seller, weak engine and bad transmission combo and all. It hits all the right notes. Looks nice inside and out. High enough but not too high, good gas mileage, not awkward proportions like the Chevy and Buick entries. Just a very well done vehicle. Another nail in coffin of compact cars
“Another nail in coffin of compact cars.”
Rumors of death of the compact (and midsize car) have been greatly exaggerated.
I realize I’m in the minority here but to me it makes more sense to get the compact hatchback (I did my part and bought one). They generally offer the same utility, drive nicer and are built on the more sophisticated compact platform vs the simpler and cheaper sub-compact platform. The compact hatchback generally costs less to than the comparable sub-compact SUV too.
But compacts are not fashionable.
Ah, well, to each his own.
Calling this Rogue and its cohort of competitors “high-riding” is like calling a skinny chick “sexy”.
I guess… till high-riding or sexy roll up.
Hmm. I think we will have to disagree on terms… and taste. :)
Hopefully Japanese build quality will improve Nissans appalling reliability ratings of late.
Thin margins will implode on Nissan if Trump hits hard with import tariffs.
“Japanese build quality”
Isn’t that more Japanese *management* quality nowadays with the actual build happening any old where, even in our coming caliphate of Stupid?
WOW – Canada gets this thing with a manual transmission! The first Nissan in decades that I would actually consider purchasing….
Nissan took its sweet time bringing us an Outlander Sport competitor. Icky. It has similar stubby ill-proportions, oversized wheels with rubber band tires, and undersized droning engine. But orange is a real color, so I’ll applaud that. The interior looks far nicer than the Mitsubishi as well, but that flat-bottomed steering wheel is a bit silly in a GTI and just completely ridiculous here.
I want to like these, which, I suppose, is a knee-jerk reaction to peer pressure. This Is Where The Market Is Going, right?
I tried out a Mazda CX-3 last fall. It’s a great looking car. And it drives fairly well. But in the end, it’s basically a Toyota Yaris iA (nee Mazda 2) with AWD that costs around $5,000 more.
No wonder automakers love ’em. I’ll pass, though.
No kidding. Add AWD and a few inches of ground clearance = profit! Yet people love them are are buying them almost faster than they can make them.
I like that the typo “stalemate” really fits better than what they were going for. Or was that on purpose?
I caught that too…I wonder if auto-correct didn’t grok “stablemate”.
So when will the Juke be killed? It is simply being left to wither on the vine and a shorter Rogue takes away one reason for the Juke to exist.
I was at the Philly airport last week. At the rental car lot the choices for a SUV were a black Rouge, a silver Rouge and you guessed it a grey Rouge.
But not a Rouge Rogue?
See? Case-in-point! The above!
I thought you got rouge at a cosmetics counter.
SRSLY, the one I rented a couple of months ago had that wheezy CVT drive.
Seats were comfortable, driving dynamics were decent, but thanks to that powertrain I never would buy.
I really like this, and it’s the best looking subcompact crossover on the market IMHO.
I wonder if Nissan is going to group the Rouge Sport’s sales with its bigger brother to stake its claim as the (eventual) top-selling CUV?
Just like every other Rogue, this is what people who have limited knowledge about cars think a nice car looks like. Oh, and don’t worry about that garbage CVT, raucous engine, or tinny build quality…its Japanese! Nissan has that dullard market on lock.
I like it. But the Rogue Senior is probably the better value.
Oh yee of little faith or knowledge of vehicles outside of North America. The Qashqai is already a big seller and will be in North America.
“More than two million Qashqais have been sold in Europe in just a little over a decade, more than 250,000 last year alone. The Qashqai has fairly owned Europe’s Compact Crossover Utility Vehicle (CCUV) market — as the continentals call these mini utes — for the last decade, still retaining about a 20 per cent segment share despite now having more than 15 direct competitors.” David Booth, the National Post, January 7th 2017.
It also earned grudging admiration, despite their deriding its name from May and Clarkson.
“Oh yee of little faith or knowledge of vehicles outside of North America.”
We’re also embarrassingly ignorant of disease organisms from the stinky parts of the world. Hope we can keep it that way for the rest of my lifetime.
And why do I have to tell a literate Canadian that “ye” has always been the traditional spelling, even in way oldy times?
‘Cause I got carried away in a high dudgeon?
Nissan’s pessimism is warranted, considering how many people think it’s the Nissan “Rouge.”
I think it looks better than its big brother, at least in that burnt orange paint.
They call it “Sport”, yet it gets less powerful powerplant. LMAO.