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2014 Nissan Versa Note pushes the little hatchback forward

Alright, truth time: The Nissan Versa isn't exactly our favorite car in the subcompact class. It's certainly competent, reliable transportation, but it's hardly an emotional purchase choice. Perhaps this new version of the Versa, then, can change our minds a bit. Meet the Versa Note - the cuter, five-door version of the li'l sedan, making its debut here at the 2013 Detroit Auto Show.
Aesthetically, the Versa Note is a pretty pleasant-looking thing; we've seen it before in JDM-spec. It's a decidedly aerodynamic thing, too, with a drag coefficient of just 0.29. And because of that - as well as an efficient little powertrain - the Note will achieve up to 40 miles per gallon on the highway.
Under the hood is Nissan's 1.6-liter inline four-cylinder engine churning out a furious 109 horsepower and 107 pound-feet of torque. Like, well, every other Nissan car, the Versa is equipped with a continuously variable transmission and will drive the front wheels exclusively. Base S models can be had with a five-speed manual transmission, but the moment you step up to a higher trim level, the do-it-yourself shifter goes away.

Nissan not shuttering Leaf EV battery plants, at least not yet

The big news on the electric vehicle front today is that Nissan is considering slowing down EV battery production in the US and UK and source all of Nissan's big packs come from Japan. Nissan may also buy some batteries from the Korean company LG Chem. This is apparently causing dissent within Nissan, but it follows what Alliance partner Renault is doing in the hunt for 180-mile EVs. This change – officially denied by Nissan – raises a lot of questions here, since Nissan made a huge deal about building the Leaf pack in Tennessee a few years ago. In fact, the car's big price drop was due, in part, to localizing battery production. If the company is really going to give up on building the packs where it makes the cars, then does Nissan not see itself as being capable of producing an energy-dense battery cheap enough to compete with Tesla and its Gigafactory and GM (which, of course, has long worked with LG Chem on batteries)? Whatever Nissan decides, it needs to be ready to compete in a market that offers a $35,000, 200-mile car by 2017. "We have not taken any decision whatsoever to modify battery sourcing allocation." – Renault-Nissan's Rachel Konrad Nissan would not comment directly on the reported change, but Rachel Konrad, the Alliance's global director of communications and marketing told AutoblogGreen, "The Renault-Nissan Alliance remains 100 percent committed to its industry-leading EV program. This global commitment continues for the foreseeable future, and we have not taken any decision whatsoever to modify battery sourcing allocation. Nissan has no plans to impair its battery investments. Beyond that,we will not comment on speculation or anonymous sources, and as a matter of policy the Alliance does not confirm or deny procurement reviews." There's a point-of-view where it doesn't matter where the batteries come from if the resulting EV is competitive, price-wise. Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn, after all, said during a recent Twizy test drive that the battery is a means, and the objective is the car. In the end, Nissan is saying it has no near-term or medium-term plan to shutter plants in US or UK and CEO Carlos Ghosn says, "What's important to us is that electric car performance fully meets customer expectations." Whatever's going on, Ghosn has seen three top executives leave the Renault-Nissan family recently.

Nissan GT-R convertible offered in three flavors from NCE

Newport Convertible Engineering, the Southern California company that can't keep its top on, has revealed on its website that it is now producing three different droptop versions of the Nissan GT-R Convertible. It's just another page in its work with high-end offerings like the new Range Rover and the Jaguar XJ. NCE owner Al Zadeh tells Autoblog that the superfast speedster came about during a trip to Abu Dhabi, when clients of his that collectively owned ten GT-Rs said they wanted him to engineer a convertible. They didn't want to see pictures, though, "They wanted to touch it and see it," he said.
So he built a convertible with a traditional, unadorned soft tonneau cover (the white one in our gallery) and another with hard tonneau cover fitted with roll hoops and a low-rise dual cowl (the blue one). When the clients saw it, "They said they wanted something more glamorous," Zadeh said. So he came up with the black version above with a hard tonneau cover and can't-miss-it cowling that, frankly, looks pretty good to us in that color and with those wheels.
Clients satisfied, the order books have opened for other GT-R owners around the world. The most restrained version runs $29,500 to build, the other two retail for $49,000, and all of them require a donor GT-R and eight weeks to finish. With facilities in SoCal, Europe and the Middle East, you won't even have to send your Godzilla too far away if this is the look you've decided it just has to have.