THE Juke-R supercar project might be a clever marketing tool for Nissan – but will dealers ever get a model to sell off the back of it?
The project – which has seen Nissan fit a GT-R engine into a Juke body – has led to questions about a performance variation of the Juke, albeit in slightly less extreme form, ever making production.
Fortunately it sounds like plans are well advanced in that respect….
‘The point of Juke is to inject some performance orientation into the Nissan brand,’ explained Steve McLennan, Nissan GB’s marketing director. ‘We’ve got no firm plans to announce now but suffice to say we will expect to keep extending Juke along the performance line as we go into the future.’
He added that a tamer version for showrooms would be unlikely to get the ‘R’ name, as that had been ‘reserved for the GT-R’. However, NISMO, a performance brand of Nissan, could be used.
‘We do have other performance branding we could use – NISMO is the obvious one and has been used by Nissan previously, so that’s a possibility,’ he said.
‘However, that’s not something we’d do in isolation in the UK. It would be a much bigger brand programme that would underpin Nissan’s sporty credentials.’
Nissan is due to make some big announcements at the Tokyo Motor Show at the end of November – and Nissan Insider will be there to report back to you live.
‘There may be some announcements around the Tokyo Motor Show,’ was all MD Jim Wright was prepared to add. Let’s hope the rumours are true and we do get a Juke-R for the road…