Test Car Specifications
Model tested: Nissan Juke-R 2.0
Pricing: circa £300,000 as tested; Juke starts at £13,930
Engine: 3.8-litre twin-turbo V6 petrol
Transmission: six-speed dual-clutch automatic, four-wheel drive
Body style: compact crossover (that's escaped from some sort of asylum...)
Top speed: 165mph
0-62mph: 3.0 seconds
Power: 600hp at 6,800rpm
Torque: 652Nm at 3,200rpm
Weight: 1,806kg
What's this?
It's the lunatic child of a Nissan fever dream - a Juke, its body distended and extended as though a weight lifter who's been hitting the whey protein a little too hard. Underneath lies the mechanical package from the quasi-god-like GT-R supercar. We've seen it before as a very, very limited edition production model (just three have been made and sold, at a colossal price, in five years), but here in Version 2.0, it's really a mobile test-bed for Nissan's hi-po engineering, and a flag-waving exercise for the company that claims to be 'The King Of Crossovers.'
The old Juke-R 1.0 ran the 545hp 3.8-litre V6 turbo engine, six-speed dual-clutch paddle shift gearbox and four-wheel drive system from the GT-R. That recipe is kept the same here for Version 2.0, but it's all amped up a bit. Now, it has the engine from the Nismo version of the GT- R (Nismo being Nissan's famed motorsports arm) so we're talking a full-fat 600hp. The old Juke-R could blitz the 0-62mph run in 3.7 seconds. This one will do it in a claimed 3.0 seconds. That's close to McLaren F1 pace in a car with the body of a suburban school-run special. Madness.
Inside, the cabin is a mix of Juke and GT-R bits. The clack-clack gear selector is from the GT-R, as are the high-backed, Nismo-stitched bucket seats. The four-point safety harness I'm guessing comes from a Demon Tweeks catalogue, and that's possibly the source for the various bits of stick-on Alcantara trim that form a dubious attempt to liven up the Juke's cabin. The most arresting sight though is the hefty roll-cage, which isn't as difficult to climb through as some, but still a reminder that this is no ordinary SUV. The final touch is the Juke's standard central touch screen, set up to display the GT-R's lap timer, G-meter and engine boost readouts. It'll be familiar to anyone who's played Gran Turismo on the PlayStation and adds a final touch of the surreal.
How does it drive?
Belted in tight and with a Nissan instructor sat next to me to make sure I don't do anything too silly, I trundle the Juke-R out onto the long strip of Swiss runway that is our test track. There's not much time with the car - a quick run up and down the runway will be my lot, but there are some challenges involved. The chicane, half way along and marked out with cones, looks simple enough, but the runway ends rather abruptly at the edge of a small Alp, and any miscalculation with the brakes could have me somewhere down the valley floor, embedded in someone's Alpen.
It's a rolling start and we're not allowed to use launch control, for fear of lunching the priceless prototype's transmission, so the initial acceleration doesn't actually feel all that special. It does build up though. Up and up and up, like a Vulcan bomber as the pilot pushes the throttles 'through the gate' for that final nth degree of thrust. By the time we reach the cone chicane, the Juke-R is travelling at some seriously insane velocity and it needs a hefty shove on the brake pedal to set it up to turn.
Handling verdict? Well, it got through the chicane, turned around at the end of the runway and came back (with some small assistance from the instructor and his driving-test-brake pedal; he obviously thought I had missed my braking point and could smell the Alpen...) so at least I can tell you that it goes, stops and turns. Much more than that is impossible to say. The steering feels hefty and lively, but a smooth Swiss runway is hardly the place to be making pronouncements about its feel or sensitivity.
Back at the start line, I unlatch my harness, clamber out and attend to my helmet-hair. Not before watching the next couple of drivers take their turns, revelling in the Beelzebub's Hoover noises made by the engine and the sheer incongruity of seeing a small SUV travel at those sorts of velocities.
Verdict
Right, there are a couple of things to note here. One, you can't buy one of these. Unless you have a spare £300,000 knocking about and some pull with the Nissan supervisory board, you're not having one. Two, a bog-standard GT-R costs from £78,000 and is all the supercar you could ever need. Quite why you'd actually want to spend four times as much on a squat, ugly Juke with five times the power it was designed to handle, I can't quite imagine. Three, for £21,995 you can have a Juke Nismo RS, which has 218hp and decent enough handling. It's no Golf GTI rival, but it's passingly good fun.
Four, a spin up and down a deserted airport runway doesn't really tell us much about the Juke-R 2.0. It is monstrously quick, but then we expected that. As to what it's actually like to drive, I can't really tell you. Probably a bit silly and prone to the sorts of breakdowns and mechanical foibles that generally afflict prototypes. I'm kinda glad that it exists though. It's great, in so many ways, that Nissan can be the company that makes the staid Pulsar, the sensible Qashqai and X-Trail and the saintly Leaf and yet not only does it makes the GT-R, it decides to take one and make it considerably more mad. Bravo.
Exterior Design
Interior Ambience
Passenger Space
Luggage Space
Safety
Comfort
Driving Dynamics
Powertrain
