Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

Nissan outlines Nismo's expansion and credentials

Nissan is reportedly working toward turning its Nismo arm into a legitimate sub-brand. According to TheDetroitBureau.com, the Japanese automaker plans to pattern its performance wing after Mercedes-Benz's AMG, which means that moving forward, every vehicle with a Nismo badge will also pack a sizable jump in performance. Engineers will work to sharpen the suspension and brakes while offering more horsepower and revised aesthetics. In addition, Nissan will seek to burnish Nismo's credibility and visibility by putting forth bigger efforts in various motorsports series.

While speaking in an interview, Nissan global marketing boss Simon Sproule noted that Japanese brands have historically missed out on exploiting their performance history. Much of that struggle has come in the form of a lack of consistency from brands like Lexus and Infiniti with their F-Sport and IPL efforts, respectively.

Sproule says Nissan is now looking at a line of low-volume vehicles, the first of which will be the Juke Nismo set to launch next year. While the executive declined to comment on which products could be next, he stressed each vehicle will have to meet a few criteria before being branded as Nismo models. Those include significant design changes inside and out as well as a 10-percent bump in horsepower and different ride and handling calibrations. Among the possible visual cues for Nismo models? Red mirror caps as well as more aggressive grilles and front fascias. Sounds good by us, but we imagine those tweaks won't come cheap.

http://www.autoblog.com/2012/11/30/n...d-credentials/

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

At least Lexus has improved much from just cosmetic differences to at least a little suspension tuning.

IPL on the other hand was dead from the start. The name itself is terrible. And they offer it on a single model.

Acura never did anything with Type-S, nor did they use it well either. Sad sad sad

mandidy

some day it had to happen

rkyat

at least with Acura, the type-s was a decent improvement, well with the rsx at least. 40hp+ and 6spd instead of 5

Harbinger

I've tried to love the Juke - ridden in it, test driven it, seen the vid of the high 10 sec Juke - and I still want to kill it with fire. Hopefully they are simply using the Juke as a rolling testbed, and will take what is an admittedly very good engine out of a vehicle with limited appeal and put it into the sentra or altima. Hopefully then they will release a true Nismo 370/G37(the Nismo aero on the 350 still gets me all tingly - just wish that it had the performance to back up the looks) and Nismo Titan. Limited production or not, they still need to sell in order to become a viable standalone tuner. That means building vehicles that people actually want to drive and could not readily build on their own. Although you could piece together a Brabus or AMG Benz, it won't have the same pedigree as one that you purchase off the shelf, and right now there is nothing that Nismo appears to be doing that brings them up to that caliber.