Nissan is no stranger in exhibiting wild concepts on auto shows; in Sao Paulo the recently teased conceptual study was finally broken covers. Nissan call it the Extrem, an exclusively built ‘urban concept sports car’ for Brazilian roads taking inspirations from the mother nature and culture of Brazil. Look at it, you get a blend of styling bits found on GT-R, Juke and 370Z. It’s in fact an in-house production from NDA (Nissan Design America) reside at San Diego, California.
Don’t get fooled by its looks. It’s a sporty crossover that Nissan says can tackle the jungle roads, evident from its high ground clearance, with agility and a compact street car for Brazilian youth. It’s 11 inch shorter than production stablemate Juke with other dimensions that are so compact than it. Has Nissan triggered a new compact segment? only they can answer that.
‘Baby beast’ is the sobriquet put on it by a Nissan chief. Brazilian car market is the most emerging of all BRIC counterparts and Nissan has upped its sales twice in the last fiscal year and aspires to capture 5% of market share by 2015. So a concept like this is more than inevitable for Nissan for making sure that they are serious about local proppects.
As for the styling, a sloping roof enhances the sportier stance on a wraparound glasshouse and a sensible aluminium skid plates protects its underbody from pounding the ground. The rest of the concept features current Nissan design trends such as a raked windshield, angular headlights and vertical daytime running LED lights. It is painted in an all-new, Solar Cortex colour, which is a downright deep metallic radiant orange. The chunky, six spoke, 19-inch alloy wheels gets a contrasting paint job as well.
It is built on the same V-platform as that of Almera and March (Micra). It gets a direct Injected, turbocharged, 1.6-litre, four-cylinder engine that also powers the Juke and Nissan sport wing’s radical Deltawing racer. This 2+2 compact crossover is regarded as a design study, though, Nissan has dismissed claims that it might make it into production, but for the future range of models this concept has revealed the glimpses of styling cues for sure.
