Out of Tune – Nissan Builds a NISMO Note
Nissan’s NISMO tuning department is known for taking the company’s already sporty cars and turning them up to the full 11. But for some reason, someone at NISMO or Nissan one day said, “you know what the public wants? A sporty 4 door hatchback. But let’s not actually make one from scratch, let’s just NISMO a Note.”
In what can only be described as a moment of extreme WTF’ery, Nissan has green-lit production of the Note NISMO, but has only scheduled it for Japan at the moment.
The NISMO Note will have a more rigid chassis for a sportier ride, and a retuned engine. NISMO’s CEO Shoichi Miyatani said in the press release that he hopes the NISMO Note will bring in new consumers, but it begs the question, who was clamoring Nissan to create a NISMO Note?
When the company’s plans for the IDX concepts are still unknown, how can this little hatchback get green lit, especially when the IDX concepts were so well received by both the press and the public, and the Notes reviews aren’t really all that great. In this instance Nissan really dropped the ball.
The regular Note makes due with only 109 hp at the crank, so a boost in horsepower would be good, but how much could they really add to make this car sell properly.
This just feels like Nissan and NISMO are creating a car for a market that really doesn’t exist, or at least it doesn’t exist for this platform.
The Note will go head to head with the Fiesta ST, and Golf GTI, but I honestly can’t see how it could even come close to those cars. The two are tuned and setup so perfectly, they would need to throw something extra special to make buyers consider this before those.
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