Automotive World

We're going to get a taste of what this means for Nissan with the presentation of the Juke Nismo concept at this week's 2011 Tokyo Motor Show.

And sure enough, after last week's revelation, the Japanese carmaker published the eighth installment of the Juke-R's ongoing video series.

According to this video which may or may not be official, the updated GT-R with 550-horses under its hood recorded a mind-boggling 0-100km/h time of 2.84 seconds and a 0-60mph (96km/h) time of just 2.72 seconds.

For the record, last year's GT-R (2012MY in the States) with 530-ponies completed the standard sprint to 100km/h in 3.0 seconds while the 2010 GT-R (2011MY in N.A.) with 485HP, in 3.5 seconds.

The result is a vehicle that defies logic and proves once again that Nissan has the guts and the will to experiment with crazy ideas. And judging by the Murano Convertible, we wouldn't be one bit surprised if someone at Nissan gave the green light for a limited production version down the road.

However, for the time being, Nissan Europe and its technical partner RML, are saying that the Juke-R is a special, road legal concept car, of which only two examples will be built, one in left-hand-drive and the other in right-hand-drive.

The new images and videos give us our first detailed look at the Juke R. On the outside, Nissan's designers applied a matte black finish to the small crossover before adding a host of aero components, the styling of which was inspired of course by the GT-R.

But is that enough to beat a wildly modified Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 Altechno that pushes out a monstrous output of 900-horsepower on a quarter-mile duel? Unfortunately for the owner of the Bugatti, the answer to that question is no.

You can watch the drag race in the video after the break.

We already know that Nissan has made some serious changes to the 2013MY (2012 for the rest of the world) GT-R. Despite the fact that it looks identical to the previous model both inside and out, under the skin, the 2013MY is even better as Nissan’s engineers have apparently been burning the midnight oil for quite some time.

Not surprisingly, Nissan Europe and its technical partner RML made plenty of use of carbon fiber panels on the build to keep the weight of the small crossover down.

Nevertheless, if you're interested in seeing how Nissan's engineers adapted the cabin and repositioned the driver controls to be more like the GT-R, you can check out the pictures and the official clip right after the jump.

After a short break in 2009, the Japanese carmaker is returning to the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show with the third iteration of the PIVO concept, which follows the PIVO 1 from 2005 and the PIVO 2 from 2007.

While the PIVO 3 keeps the three-seat layout with a central driving position as well as the all-wheel steering system of its predecessors, it's styling has evolved and moved closer to production.

Francois Bancon, Nissan deputy divisional GM for product strategy, says that while the company has not yet made any final decision to produce the PIVO, it is considering it:

We’ll remind you that the revised 2012MY GT-R shaved more than two seconds off the time of the 2011MY version dropping it from 7:26.4" to 7:24.22".

But going slideways in these type of conditions can be hazardous not only for your health but for the…natural surroundings as well as the driver of this blacked out 300ZX quickly found out. You can check out the video after the jump.

The most significant challenge had to do with the Juke-R's wheelbase that is 250mm shorter than the GT-R's.

The vehicle in question was a Stillen R-35 Nissan GT-R driven by Steve Millen while acrobatic racing pilot, Leigh Hopper, controlled the Eurocopter “Squirrel”.

Now, this isn't the first time a sports car has lined up against a flying machine. But this spontaneous road-and-sky-racing during a pit stop was unexpected – especially as they made two runs instead of one.