The Nissan Juke is a fun, different-looking small crossover with a powerful turbocharged engine and a frisky chassis—but Nissan’s Technical Centre for Europe and tuning outfit RML felt that it wasn’t frisky enough and decided to inject the Juke with some more R, as in GT-R. That’s right: They installed the GT-R’s twin-turbocharged, 3.8-liter V-6 engine, six-speed dual-clutch transmission, and all-wheel-drive system into a Juke. The result has been christened the Juke-R, and Nissan is referring to it as the “first-ever super crossover.” Given the facts at hand, we are having trouble finding a way to disagree with that statement, and it goes without saying that we are giddily eager to see what a Juke with hero-car power can do.
Nissan has released a video outlining a few of the modifications it made to the Juke to ensure a (relatively) smooth marriage of a 480-hp drivetrain (based on the hp numbers tossed around by the Nissan engineer in the video, the Juke-R will get the 2011 GT-R engine package, not the 530-hp unit from the refreshed 2012 model) and 3000 pounds of crossover. As you can see in the clip, the Juke’s floorpan was completely gutted to make room for the big longitudinal motor and AWD bits, but RML and Nissan also widened the car’s track and plan to add a pretty cool wide-body kit (seen in the sketch above). Nissan isn’t showing the completed car yet, but says the Juke-R will be road legal and that two will be made—one that’s left-hand drive, and another that’s right-hand drive. Check out the video below to watch portions of the Juke-R’s assembly.
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