Nissan Dualis Qashqai Nismo confirmed

Nissan made a splash at Tokyo and Los Angeles motor shows with vehicles from their Nismo performance division.

Particularly: the GT-R Nismo, the Juke Nismo RS, the Pulsar (Sentra) Nismo and our pick of the show: the Nismo IDx that reprises the iconic Datsun 1600.

But it seems they're not stopping there. Nismo has been allowed to get their hands on the recently unveiled Qashqai small crossover -- curently called the Dualis here, but with a name change due with the new model next year.

The Qashqai Nismo will be launched late in 2014, and while the decision on an engine has yet to be made, it will offer more than 150kW of power (about 50kW more than the 2.0-litre in the current Dualis), according to a report in the UK's CAR magazine.

Nissan says the Qashqai Nismo will have to be more powerful than the Juke Nismo sold overseas. “I wouldn't just give it the engine from Juke. It’d have more power than that,” Nissan global product boss Andy Palmer told the magazine, suggesting that the Qashqai could end up with the uprated 1.6-litre four-cylinder from the Juke Nismo RS unveiled at the LA show.

With some tweaking, including a reprogrammed CPU and larger-breathing exhaust, that unit now squeezes out 160kW of power and 285Nm of torque. However Palmer said Nismo versions are not just about delivering more power. "I want us to focus on ride and handling, making cars that aren’t just faster, but also feel obviously more fun to drive,” he said.

The Nismo sub-brand is still being considered as a business case for local roll-out by Nissan Australia, so it's early days for thinking about the Qashqai Nismo coming here. But the Dualis is a popular vehicle in the Australian market -- leading its class last year and only overtaken this year by run-out sales of the exiting Hyundai ix35 (its nearest rival) -- so a performance version of the Nissan crossover should only add more shine to the sales figures.