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Nissan Qashqai GT-R Is the Godzilla Crossover We All Want

Nissan is currently stuck making an unending list of rental cars and family crossovers. But they once provided the world with the best drift cars and some of the coolest, most affordable sports coupes.
Nissan Qashqai GT-R Is the Godzilla Crossover We All Want 4 photos
Photo: hugosilvadesigns/Instagram
Nissan Qashqai GT-R Is the Godzilla Crossover We All WantNissan Qashqai GT-R Is the Godzilla Crossover We All WantNissan Qashqai GT-R Is the Godzilla Crossover We All Want
We know that the S13 is never coming back, and the '400Z' might very well stay in production until 2040 with zero power upgrades. So instead of endlessly supporting the sports cars, we're going to give our campaign donations to the crossovers as long as they promise to have twin-turbo V6 engines.

Nissan knows that if you're crazy enough and have a good plasma cutter, even little crossovers can rock 500 horsepower. A long time ago, they put the GT-R powertrain, complete with the AWD, into the little Juke crossover.

The result was the Juke-R, which they said at the time was entering ultra-limited production. Now, we don't think they actually made any past the initial one, but a tuning company liked the idea a lot.

Thus, the Qashqai R was born back in 2014. It too had the GT-R powertrain, only this time, it had been tuned to deliver over 1,100 horsepower. "It's as fast a Bugatti Veyron," they said, and a video was also released to prove this.

Now, we do understand that our American friends don't know what a Qashqai is, or even how to pronounce it. But it's basically the older version of the Rogue Sport. After this was launched in Europe, it practically invented the family crossover segment and dominated sales as a result.

That model has been out of production for many years, but rendering artist Hugo Silva decided to give the Qashqai R another chance at life and created this epic set of images. His vision is even more aggressive than the Veyron killer, as it has a massive widebody kit with about a foot of extra girth.

Also, the crazy Nissan has aero for days in the form of ground effects, a carbon splitter, and that giant rear wing. It's safe to say this won't be used for shopping.


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About the author: Mihnea Radu
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Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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