Nissan Juke GT-R

In the history of the Japanese motor industry there have been some bonkers creations. I can only deduce that they all have a small room in their R&D departments that is populated by a bunch of complete lunatics. In fact it’s probably much less a room and something more along the lines of a heavily bolted prison cell.

Every now and then one of the little guys escape, on a mission to infiltrate the production line with their latest techno-mechanical invention. An event which seems to have recently slipped through the cracks at Nissan.

So the question is what do you get when you cross a Nissan Juke with a Nissan GT-R? Well it’s simple really, the fastest, most exciting and daring compact crossover in the world.

Meet the Nissan Juke-R. Not content with re-shaping the new car market by pioneering the crossover – a success reflected in the soaring sales of its Qashqai and Juke models – Nissan is now creating the Juke-R, the first ever super crossover.

Unfortunately the car is not for production, but rather is a one-off, road legal concept car, developed by Nissan and built by leading motorsports outfit RML with input from Nissan Technology Centre for Europe (NTC-E).

As you can see this is no normal Nissan Juke. They’ve beefed up the looks via the addition of a big and angry front grille, big and angry side skirts, big and angry wheel arches, two rear spoilers and some holes in the bonnet.

Under the bonnet is a 3.8-litre twin-turbo V6 engine adopted directly from Nissan’s GT-R. While Nissan haven’t provided official figures, you know it’ll be earth shatteringly fast based on the 393kW pumped out of its big sister.

While there’s no specific information given on the suspension modifications the standard Juke will undergo, we have no doubt they will be monumental. In fact they have to be in order to reign in the biblical power on tap. And if the GT-R is anything to go by, the Juke-R will handle like a house fly.

The interior merges crossover and supercar, as the Juke’s dashboard has been transformed to accommodate the gauges, dials and LCD display from the GT-R. The rest of the interior has the look of a machine bred for the track. Twin race-seats with five-point harnesses sit inside a visible roll cage that gives FIA safety standards as well as enhanced rigidity to the chassis.

It seems Nissan are keeping their lips tight on this one, but visit their Facebook page to keep in the loop.

Miles Downard