Nissan makes some great cars, but its range has lacked anything spicy for a while now. And no, we’re not counting the Ariya Nismo.
What we’d love to see in the line-up is something like this Sentra Spec-V, even if the name will mean little to the average UK driver. The Sentra is a car that’s never been sold in the UK, and Spec-V is a designation only used by Nissan a handful of times.
The prospect of a new Sentra Spec-V would be particularly exciting for American car enthusiasts, though. First arriving in 2002, the Sentra Spec-V sports saloon was a considerably racier version of an otherwise humdrum Nissan, but this one ups the ante much further than any of its predecessors ever have.
It’s hard to ignore the enormous rear wing, which has been pinched from an R35 GT-R Nismo, but it doesn’t look out of place, because there’s also a chunky front splitter, new side skirts and Nismo 19-inch wheels. It sits lower on Nismo suspension, and there are beefed-up Brembo brakes. Inside, there’s a Nismo steering wheel and Recaro front seats also borrowed from a GT-R Nismo.
Under the bonnet, there’s a 2.0-litre, four-cylinder engine shared with the standard Sentra, albeit punting out roughly double the original power. It’s packing uprated internals and a new turbocharger to give an output of 295bhp. Oh, and there’s a six-speed manual gearbox sourced from the Juke Nismo RS. Remember that?
