Nissan Is Rolling Out A Wild Nismo Concept Next Month

It was just yesterday we heard news of Nissan’s plans to revitalise its Nismo performance badge, aiming to double the range of cars sold under the banner, bring it to more markets and bump annual sales from 100,000 to 150,000 by 2028.

We weren’t quite expecting to see the first steps towards that so quickly, but already, Nissan is teasing a wild-looking new concept that’s coming to the Tokyo Auto Salon on 9 January. 

Literally all we have so far is the one shady teaser image above, which shows what looks like the rear of a hatchback complete with some truly outrageous arch flares. However, we don’t think this is a total ground-up piece of concept car fantasy, because the shape of that rear light and the way the bottom of the rear windscreen kicks up at the corner matches up pretty much perfectly with the current version of the Nissan Note.

Yep, the car your grandparents probably bought in 2006 is still around in Japan, now in its third generation, where it’s also sold in a more upmarket guise called the Note Aura.

There's already a Nismo version of the Note Aura available in Japan, and while it gets the usual Nismo red makeup and an aero setup that apparently produces actual, real downforce, it also retains the base car’s highly unsporty 133bhp hybrid powertrain. Whatever this concept is packing, the enormous box arches suggest to us that it’s probably more than that.

We suspect this is going to be more of a statement of intent for Nismo’s new lease on life rather than a look at an actual production car, although we’ll be more than happy to be proven wrong. We’ll find out more when the Tokyo Auto Salon kicks off on 9 January, where it won’t be the only sporty display vehicle from Nissan: it’ll also serve as the debut for a facelifted Z Nismo sports car that’ll get the manual gearbox it’s always deserved, and a version of the new Leaf that’s had a visual makeover from Nismo-owned tuning firm Autech.