Nissan's motorsport wing breathes on the Nissan Juke with pleasing results
Another success story for the UK car industry: a new kind of hot hatch we can lay claim to as our own. The Nissan Juke Nismo is the go-faster performance version of the smash-hit supermini-sized crossover. More than a third of a million Jukes have been built at Nissan's Sunderland plant (now officially the largest car plant this country has ever seen) since 2010, and now the plant has a flagship performance model to produce.The Juke Nismo is not just built in Britain; a significant amount of design and development for the model has taken place here, with Nissan's Paddington design studio and Cranfield technical centre assisting Nissan and Nismo engineers in Japan.The result of this collaboration is a 197bhp 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol-powered Juke, with a host of revisions to the chassis and exterior and interior styling to make it worthy of the hallowed Nismo badge.That Nismo badge also needs an introduction. Short for Nissan Motorsports, Nismo has been tuning Nissans and producing highly successful factory race cars for the best part of 50 years and has become enshrined in popular culture thanks to its presence in the Gran Turismo video games, the first of which appeared in 1997.The thinking behind taking Nismo global now with volume products rather than high-performance niche models or aftermarket upgrades is that the Playstation generation has now grown up and, as now as a 20/30-something with a disposable income, has the funds to buy a car of their own, and a £19,995 compact crossover take on the hot hatch formula seems a good place to start for Nismo.
Nissan's motorsport wing breathes on the Nissan Juke with pleasing results
Another success story for the UK car industry: a new kind of hot hatch we can lay claim to as our own. The Nissan Juke Nismo is the go-faster performance version of the smash-hit supermini-sized crossover. More than a third of a million Jukes have been built at Nissan's Sunderland plant (now officially the largest car plant this country has ever seen) since 2010, and now the plant has a flagship performance model to produce.The Juke Nismo is not just built in Britain; a significant amount of design and development for the model has taken place here, with Nissan's Paddington design studio and Cranfield technical centre assisting Nissan and Nismo engineers in Japan.The result of this collaboration is a 197bhp 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol-powered Juke, with a host of revisions to the chassis and exterior and interior styling to make it worthy of the hallowed Nismo badge.That Nismo badge also needs an introduction. Short for Nissan Motorsports, Nismo has been tuning Nissans and producing highly successful factory race cars for the best part of 50 years and has become enshrined in popular culture thanks to its presence in the Gran Turismo video games, the first of which appeared in 1997.The thinking behind taking Nismo global now with volume products rather than high-performance niche models or aftermarket upgrades is that the Playstation generation has now grown up and, as now as a 20/30-something with a disposable income, has the funds to buy a car of their own, and a £19,995 compact crossover take on the hot hatch formula seems a good place to start for Nismo.