Nissan's performance brand Nismo is planning a stand-alone hybrid sports car - report

A stand-alone model from Nissan's performance arm, Nismo, is on the way for release globally sometime during this decade, according to the sub-brand’s CEO.

After the long-lived Nissan GT-R was discontinued early this year, more question marks have been placed over the likelihood of a Nissan sports car halo to replace it. Now, it seems there might be one in the works.

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Set to be separate from the standard Nissan line-up, and expected to be a hybrid sports car, the car has been confirmed and teased by Nismo CEO Takao Katagiri while speaking to UK publication, Autocar.

While it’s not expected to be fully electric, the coming Nismo sports car will likely be a hybrid, given that the recently-released Nissan Z coupe is unavailable in many European markets due to its 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 falling foul of increasingly more stringent emissions laws.

Nismo CEO, Takao Katagiri, told Autocar the United Kingdom is an ‘essential’ market for the brand thanks to Nissan’s factory there in Sunderland.

“[There] is a very, very important vision [in Europe] for Nissan,” he said. "It’s around the heart of this [new car].

“This region [the UK] is very, very special for us, especially [for] performance cars.

"So one thing I can say is please wait. We are going to introduce a very exciting model to the UK market under the Nismo brand.”

Mr Katagiri added that more mainstream models will likely come first, in a combination of hybrid and full electric, but that the sports car from Nismo would arrive this decade, before 2030.

In a separet report, Japanese outlet Best Car indicated the GT-R successor would be an electric vehicle, engineered in collaboration with Nissan’s US development team, arriving in around 2028 to allow Nissan the time to develop the more efficient solid-state batteries.

Instead of targeting the likes of the Porsche 911, the all-electric Taycan is far more likely to be a benchmark for the GT-R-successor development team, reports say.