Nissan Juke-R

he handler strapped into the carbon fiber race bucket next to me is the only other person outside of yours truly who looks like he thinks this is a bad idea. I've just finished situating myself in the cabin of the very first Nissan Juke-R ever constructed. There are literally thousands of man hours in this single prototype and only four examples of the car total in the entire world. Each one carries a price tag of around $656,400 at current conversion rates, making this both the rarest and most expensive piece of machinery anyone has ever let me get close enough to sniff, let alone drive.

And that's exactly what I mean to do.
I'm not puttering around some parking lot, either. Nissan has seen fit to let me hammer this thing around a road course set up on the infield of the now defunct Nashville Superspeedway for as long as my passenger will let me, and I'm keen to oblige. I send out the familiar and threadbare "Please don't let me crash this car" one last time, and with the engine already running, I click the shifter into gear and let the Juke-R grumble its way to the pit exit.


The brave young man in the passenger seat next to me shoveled hours of his life into stitching this car together alongside his coworkers at a shop in Wellingborough, a small village just north of London, so when he recommends we take a few laps to get cozy with how the Juke-R drives, I'm happy to do so. At first punch of the accelerator out of the pits, the machine reveals itself to be Godzilla spawn in the truest sense. Thrust comes on in that same boundless swell that makes the GT-R such a mind-boggling creation, and the fact that I'm looking out over a set of alligator turning indicators instead of a long supercar hood forces a slight mental disconnect.

The first long left-hand sweeper has me braking early, terrified that 545 horsepower wed to a 99.6-inch wheelbase will see me pirouette right up that banked turn and straight into the tire wall backwards. As much as I'd hate to see all this carbon fiber go skittering across the Middle Tennessee landscape, I'd hate even more to see my teeth do the same after the build team got finished using my head for a rugby ball.

"You can carry a bit more speed through there," my handler says. "Just make sure all your accelerating and braking happens in a straight line."

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