A team of Russians built this unbelievable, unofficial Juke R. It's gearing up to compete against Ken Block at Gymhkana GRiD this weekend. Here's everything you need to know about the car with a "power output of a Chernobyl reactor explosion."
That's a direct quote from Misha Charoudin of SV Tuning, the shop responsible for the now-infamous unofficial Nissan Juke R.
For those of you not aware, the Juke R was a project funded by Nissan and carried out in England to shoehorn a Nissan GT-R platform into a stock Juke crossover. The project was seriously difficult for the motorsports engineering company responsible, RML, yet it was so fundamentally desirable that Nissan ordered 20 of them to sell at $600,000. Yes, you read that correctly.
St. Petersburg's SV Tuning realized there was a market for these cars beyond Nissan's overpriced, underproduced official run. Misha explained to me the impetus for the project. Oh, and he gave me the link to where you can order one here at Juke-R.com.
The idea behind the project is to offer customers a possibility to own a unique vehicle, without paying not-justified amount of money for one of the 20 units offered by Nissan. The customers can submit their own GT-R for a Juke R conversion or order a complete custom vehicle. Both options cost only a fraction of what Nissan is asking.
Could the Russian version really be as capable as the official British/Japanese one? Well, this one has the same GT-R parts as the official Juke R, only it can put out something around 838 horsepower, at least when Autoblog.nl tested it in September.
Of course, merging a Juke with a GT-R wasn't easy for Nissan's official team. What challenges did the Russians face?
The most difficult part of the build? Probably everything related to the geometry. This barn on wheels with aerodynamics of a brick and power output of a Chernobyl reactor explosion has to be as safe as possible in every sense of the word. This means being stable on the straights with speeds reaching 300 km/h and on the race track experiencing lateral G's. Finally, the whole construction must be protective enough against the impacts, even after all the modifications.
Moreover, the cooling design was another issue as the Juke body does not offer enough size to place the cooling components, let alone supply them with enough air.
Safety is a big concern with this car, as it famously crashed into a wall on video. Misha attested that the driver got the pedals mixed up, and that there's a lot to be said for the safety of the car in the crash.
Ironically enough we can confirm it is the safest as it gets as you have seen two months ago. The car launched to a speed of 145 km/h in 4 seconds and might have dropped some by making a turn, still hitting a reinforced concrete wall with 100 km/h while the driver and the passengers did not wear seat belts. Both were able to walk away from the accident.
On top of that, the car was fully repaired in a number of days, speaking to the skills of the crew.
Oh, and it tied a Bugatti Veyron in a drag race back when it only had a mere 700 horsepower.
Everything You Need To Know About The Russian Juke R Gymkhana Car