Nissan Juke Nismo debuts

The Nissan Juke Nismo will debut this weekend at Le Mans 24 Hours and go on sale in the UK in early 2013.

The Nissan Juke Nismo sounds like it should be a slightly watered-down version of the Juke R, but it’s not.

The Juke Nismo, revealed at the end of 2011, is in fact a titivated regular Juke; think the Nissan version of IPL. A sporty take on regular models and a sport take on Nissans we expect to roll out across much of the Nissan range in the coming years.

The Juke Nismo (which stands for Nissan Motorsports International Co, in case you were wondering) arrives in final production guise at this weekend’s Le Mans 24 Hours and is an appealing take on the urban Juke.

Changes to this production version of the Nismo are minimal, with as far as we can see just a tweak to the bumpers, with bigger air inlets and more LED running lights at the front and a solitary exhaust pipe instead of the pair the concept had.

That means the butch look of the Nismo is pretty much intact, with side skirts, a spoiler out back, wider wings and 18″ alloys. Inside there’s suede-trimmed Nismo sports seats with red stitching and Nissan has redesigned the steering wheel, pedals, gauges, gear knob and door trims to add a sporty feel.

Under the bonnet is a tuned 1.6 litre engine with a turbo and direct injection which, say Nissan, is inspired by the engine in the DeltaWing Le Mans car (hence the debut of the Juke Nismo at Le Mans). What Nissan hasn’t yet told us is how much power the Juke Nismo can muster, but we’re expecting somewhere around 200bhp.

To make the most of a relatively decent amount of power in the compact Juke Nissan has tweaked the steering and stiffened the suspension and added torque vectoring for better grip and higher cornering speeds.

So far we have no Nissan Juke Nismo price details, although the release date is as early as January 2013.