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It's three weeks since Nissan first showed its Pulsar Nismo hot hatch. When the covers receded at the Paris motor show, information was thin on the ground, the car officially a design study with public desires yet to form its destiny.
But TG has just scooped an update on the fast Pulsar from Nissan GB’s sports car chief, James Oliver, while trying to egg him on to get it real.
“It’s officially a concept," Oliver reiterates. “There’s definitely a market to go at. It’s being reviewed at the moment as a proposal: how many can we sell, what will the R and D cost, is there a business case for it, and so on.”
With no firm talk of power or chassis upgrades over the vanilla Pulsar, we ask what direction a production Nismo iteration could take.
“It could be a warm hatch, a hot hatch or a fire-breathing monster. As far as it’s gone so far is this design study.”
We like the sound of a flame-spitting Pulsar, and another company chief later divulges 270bhp is a potential target for power output if Nissan pops some brave pills and heads for the throats of the Renaultsport Megane and Leon Cupra 280.
Both of those cars have recently traded blows on the Nordschleife. Could the Pulsar Nismo follow its GT-R bigger brother and aim for class honours – i.e. fastest front-driver – at the Nürburgring?
“It depends which direction the car takes. If it goes down the out-and-out performance car route, then that is the benchmark area," Oliver says. “So it [the Nürburgring] would be the logical place to develop the car if it went in that direction.” Start writing your begging letters and tweets to Nissan now.
One thing we’re unlikely to see is a diesel hot Pulsar to take on the Golf GTD, while liberal use of the Nismo brand on styling fripperies – like BMW's M Sport or Audi's S-line – isn’t in the short-term plan either, says Oliver.
“At the moment Nismo is our performance brand. We want to make sure it’s a credible performance car, so we’ve not got to the M Sport route of ‘I only want the wheels’. It’s the full package or nothing else.”
And what about a production spin-off of the cute IDx sports coupe to tackle the much-lauded Toyota GT86 head on?
“It’s always something that would be considered, and you have to look at the market. There are other manufacturers that do very well in that market – GT86 for example, and MX-5 – the question is whether we decide to tap into it.”
Could the next-generation 370Z downsize to fill the void, we ask? “If we were going to do it, it would need to be a whole new model. You can’t take something that’s a big, heavy, old-school car and downsize it. It would need to be a whole new platform if we were to go in that direction.”
What would you like to see Nismo do next? Let us know – alongside your ‘make a fire-breathing monster!’ pleas – below.
Written By:- Stephen Dobie
More of this article on the Top gear website
