Nissan Revives Its Smallest Car With One Of Its Biggest Engines

Nissan’s smallest car in the U.S. is the Versa subcompact sedan, but in other markets the automaker offers a range of smaller vehicles, one of which is still the popular Micra mini hatch. A new sixth-generation Micra with electric power goes on sale late this year, and in the lead-up, Nissan decided to revitalize one of the wildest Micras it’s ever built: the Micra 350SR.

The one-off concept also just turned 23, which is a significant number for Nissan. You’ll find it on a number of the automaker’s race cars. It’s not because Nissan’s management staff are huge Michael Jordan fans. Rather, the pronunciation of the numbers two and three in Japanese, ni and san, sounds a lot like Nissan.

From The Same Company Behind The GT-R-Powered Juke-R

The original Micra 350SR was the idea of Nissan’s U.K. arm and was built by RML Group, the British motorsports and engineering company that stuffed a GT-R’s twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter V6 and all-wheel-drive system into a Juke subcompact crossover a decade ago. Prior to the Juke-R project, RML already had some practice with such conversions because it already built the Micra 350SR a decade earlier – this time stuffing a Murano’s 3.5-liter V6 into a third-generation Micra.

The Micra’s diminutive size meant RML needed to move the firewall back to fit the V6 under the hood, and while they were at it, the company’s engineers also stripped out most of the car to help get the weight down to about 2,645 pounds. The V6 was rated at 265 horsepower in the Murano at the time, but RML bumped output closer to 300 hp by adding Nismo high-lift cams, a high-flow intake, headers borrowed from a 350Z, and an ECU tune. Given the power-to-weight ratio – plus the fitment of a 6-speed manual transmission – the car must be a blast to drive.

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Nissan originally rolled out the Micra 350SR concept in 2002 to celebrate the nameplate’s little-known motorsports participation in Japan, and since then, the concept has been used for various promotional events as well as being loaned out to journalists. Naturally, it had gathered some wear and tear over the years.

Nissan Restomods Its Own Concept

As a result, Nissan recently gave the concept a makeover, including a new livery combining gray and blue instead of the original red and white. Various gloss black accents were added to the exterior, such as on the grille and lower parts of the vehicle, and new LED headlights with daytime running lights were also swapped in. The original 18-inch RAYS wheels taken from a 350Z are still present, but now feature a touch of black paint.

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Inside, new seats and harnesses were installed, along with a 9.0-inch touchscreen display for the infotainment system, which includes support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Micra Lives On As EV

Nissan previewed the new sixth-generation Micra in March, confirming at the time that the new minicar will be offered exclusively as an electric vehicle – and in European markets only. It is designed around the AmpR Small EV platform developed by Nissan’s alliance partner Renault, which uses it in the Renault R5 and Alpine A290 hatchbacks. The Micra will be built alongside those models at a plant in France, and will initially offer buyers the choice of 40- and 52-kWh battery options.