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Nissan Extrem: It’s a Micra Urban Crossover

The Nissan Extrem Concept has been revealed in Brazil as an urban crossover based on the Micra platform. The Extrem is, say Nissan, an ‘Urban Rally Car’ designed to be a tough street fighter and penned by Nissan Design in San Diego specifically for the Brazilian market. Based on the underpinnings of the Micra, the Extrem is 3850mm long and 1760mm wide and is, although it’s hard to judge in the photos, a chunk smaller than the Nissan’s current smallest crossover, the Juke.

Electric Land Rover Defender at Geneva 2013

Land Rover has built seven electric Defenders to act as research vehicles for EVs off-road. All seven Defender EVs will be at Geneva 2013. What it is is the 2013 Land Rover Defender – in a variety of body styles – with the diesel gubbins removed and replaced with a big bank of batteries and an electric motor, as Land Rover try to find out if EV off-roaders have real world application possibilities.

New Hyundai Test Centre at the Nurburgring revealed

Hyundai’s new test centre at the Nurburgring If anyone had said, just a few years ago, that Hyundai would develop a test centre at the Nurburgring to help shake-down their cars, they’d have been laughed at. But Hyundai – and Kia – have come so far in recent years that it makes absolute sense for them to develop a full-time testing facility at the Nurburgring to test their cars for the road, along with just about every other car maker of note. James May may object to the Nurburgring factor in the suspension set-ups of many road cars (and we do have some sympathy for his point of view), but the sometimes extreme nature of the Nurburgring’s surfaces – and its endless twists and turns, uphill and down – do offer car makers an easily accessible place to test cars in the (almost) real world.