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Nissan applies for 'R-Hybrid' trademark, but what is it for?

Patent and trademark filings are sort of like tasseography for those of us in the auto industry. If you know where and how to look at something, there's a lot to be figured out. Take this trademark filing from Nissan - it's similar to the Pure Drive badge found on a Versa or Sentra, but the bottom half sports the phrase "R-Hybrid." This wouldn't be remarkable if the "R" in R-Hybrid weren't the same style as the "R" in the Nissan GT-R's badge, right down to the serifs.
While it's easy to see this as grasping at straws, it makes a fair degree of sense. The R35 GT-R may be a dominant performance machine, but it's been around since 2008, which is donkey years in the automotive industry. And based on the recent crop of hybridized hypercars and racecars, a hybrid GT-R doesn't seem like such a stretch.
As Car And Driver points out, figuring out that the GT-R will go hybrid isn't hard - figuring out when it will arrive, is. The buff book rightly points out that a new GT-R isn't expected until 2017, but that designing and trademarking a badge four years ahead of time is a bit odd. Car and Driver speculates that we could see a mildly hybridized R35, although the chances do seem remarkably low. Head over to C/D for a more thorough rundown on why this just might be a GT-R badge, including comparisons with other R-badged Nissans.

Nissan Juke Nismo RS sets world record for driving on two wheels

Motorcycle enthusiasts live by the epithet "two wheels good, four wheels bad." But what about when the two good wheels happen to be on a four-wheeled vehicle? And what, we might add, happens when said four-wheeled vehicle is trying to breaka a Guiness World Record? Well, you get the latest stunt from the Goodwood Festival of Speed. In between the vintage, occasionally crashy racers and modern metal, the British division of Nissan sent stunt driver Terry Grant out onto the famous Goodwood circuit in a Juke Nismo RS, where he ran the entire course while driving on two wheels. Really, you need to see it to believe it. But while the feat itself is truly impressive, what's most entertaining is the typically droll commentating of the British announcers. They're basically talking about this car in much the same manor as you or I might discuss the weather. Never mind that this is a small crossover driving 1.16 miles, along a twisty course, on just two wheels. While the distance is impressive, Grant also made the journey at a pretty reasonable speed. He completed the run in just two minutes and ten seconds. That means he had to average over 30 miles per hour across the entire course... while driving on just two wheels. You'll want to take a look at the video at the top of the page, just to experience and enjoy a truly impressive piece of driving.

Nissan Leaf sales get January jump as Chevy Volt trends downward

The cold January sales dip hit both the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt last month, but when compared 2014 to 2013's first-month-of-the-year sales totals, one of the two early plug-in vehicles obviously came out on top. The top Leaf market also shifted away from Atlanta for the first time in months. Last year, the Leaf sold just 650 units in January, but it managed to move 1,252 last month, a 92.6-percent increase over 2013 but a big drop from the 2,529 sold in December 2013. Paige Presley over at Nissan told AutoblogGreen that the Leaf has now broken sales records for 11 months straight and that, "we see unique seasonality with some December pull-ahead demand based on federal and state tax incentives." The number one Leaf market also shifted away from Atlanta for the first time in months, moving back to San Francisco. That change could be short-lived. "We had some inventory constraint issues early in the month in Atlanta with end-of-year demand depleting stock," Presley said. "By the time we resolved that, the weather hampered sales." There was not as much good news on the Chevrolet front. Last month, the Volt sold 918 units, down from 1,140 in January 2013 and 2,392 in December 2013. It also marks the first time the Volt has sold in the three-digit range since January 2012, when it sold 603 copies. That string of solid months means that the plug-in hybrid has a roughly 12,000-unit lead over the EV since the two cars brought plug-in vehicles back to the mass market all the way back in December 2010. We will have our full report of January's green car sales up soon.