I couldn't help but remember the less than worthy cars Chevy put the SS moniker on in the mid 2000's. The Cobalt SS and Traiblazer SS were great performance cars in their respective classes but the Malibu and Impala simply weren't. Nissan seems to want to cash in on the NISMO name the same way Chevy did with the SS moniker - by making more NISMO models. This is even worse, though, because of fact that the SS had an even longer heritage that is harder to tarnish with a couple of bad models. Here's the first example: the Nissan Juke NISMO. It will start at $23,780 for a FWD with a manual and $26,080 or an AWD with a CVT ($24,998 and $28,478 in Canada). So what is more sporty about this NISMO model? Well, you get a whopping 9 hp over the run-of-the-mill Jukes. On the outside, you still get the polarizing body but with a racy "aerodynamic body kit" (according to the website) and 18" wheels wrapped in Continental ContiSportContact5 tires that a
Before getting into this, I have to confess something... I had never driven an Audi TT before. Not until this one, anyway. But that hasn't stopped me from forming an opinion about it from the comforts of my own couch while reading and watching reviews online. After all, if you've never done that, do you even know what the point of the internet is? Now, we all interpret reviews differently. Call it confirmation bias if you will, but if you like a car, you'll read a review and look at the positives as what makes the car great and the negatives are but a few quibbles you have to live with. If you don't like a car, the positives are a few things the manufacturer got right while screwing up everything else. It's a bit harsh to put the TT in the latter category, but that's where it ended up for me... I never took the TT seriously. The problem with the TT for me isn't that it's a Golf underneath, per se. There is nothing wrong with a performance car sharing a