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Nissan Juke-R pitted against Bugatti Veyron in brilliantly odd drag race

The Nissan Juke-R must've been a tough car to build a business case for, yet the madcap little crossover with the heart of a GT-R is now a production reality. Admittedly, we should probably assign some quotes around "production," since the vehicle is being built on a one-by-one on-demand basis at extraordinary cost - at an estimated price of well over $600,000, it has little in common with the already bonkers everyday Juke. We're just happy it exists at all.
With 545 horsepower, we also didn't figure it needed more power. But that apparently hasn't stopped the tuning community, which probably only had to adapt performance adders designed for the GT-R to the mechanically similar CUV. Thus, we end up with this mile-long drag race, which pits a Bugatti Veyron against a Juke-R prepared by an outfit called Shpilli Villi Engineering with a claimed 700 horsepower. That's still well down on horsepower versus the legendary quad-turbo supercar, but the much smaller Nissan also figures to be a lot lighter while boasting similar all-wheel-drive traction. We don't have much more information to go on other than this video, and it doesn't appear that both drivers necessarily got their best runs in, but it certainly makes for jaw-dropping watching. Check it out by scrolling below.

Renault taking Alpine endurance racing, enters 24 Hours of Le Mans

Renault isn't letting up with the return of its Alpine brand. After announcing a partnership with Caterham to bring a new Alpine to market by 2015 (now expected by 2016), the French firm has announced it is taking Alpine racing again in the European Le Mans Series this year - and that includes The 24 Hours of Le Mans.
It has been 35 years since Alpine last competed in Le Mans, when it won the race outright and dropped the mic as it left the pits, never to return. Before that, in the 11 years it campaigned in the most famous endurance race on the planet from 1963 to 1978, it took seven class wins.
Caterham won't be involved with the race team, however; that will be an effort spearheaded by the Signatech-Nissan team that has been running GT Academy winners in LMS racing. Alpine is preparing an LMP2 chassis that will get a 500-horsepower Nissan engine for this year's championship, with the first two named drivers being Nelson Panciatici (above right) and Pierre Ragues (above left). The third driver for Le Mans will be announced later this month when the racer is launched at the Le Castellet race track in southern France.

2015 Nissan GT-R Nismo to pack 595 hp, lap N"urburgring in 7:08

With two major auto shows taking place this week on different sides of the globe, the amount of news being posted across the internet is reaching a fever pitch. Naturally, things happen, trigger fingers get itchy and stories get leaked, which is apparently how we came across this spate of premature pictures and information on the eagerly anticipated Nissan GT-R Nismo.
Packing 595 horsepower and 480 pound-feet of torque from its twin-turbocharged, 3.8-liter V6, the Nismo-fied GT-R should be a serious kick in the pants when run hard. The new power is thanks to a number of donor parts from the GT-R Nismo GT3 racecar, bits that include larger turbochargers, revised intake and exhaust systems and new ignition timing.
Thanks to the engine enhancements, and, we imagine, a few other tweaks to the chassis, brakes and aerodynamics that have yet to be published, the GT-R Nismo is said to blitz the Nürburgring in just 7:08, a mere 11 seconds slower than the $845,000 Porsche 918 Spyder. For a car that is rumored to cost well under a quarter of the price, that performance is just immense.