Filed under: Coupe, Hybrid, Performance, Nissan, Design/Style, Racing
http://hss-prod.hss.aol.com/hss/storage/adam/e30a9a91ce98b4181e9134d6dee2f452/Nissan-R-Hybrid-logo-626x161.jpg
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](http://blog.caranddriver.com/nissan-r-hybrid-emblem-really-looks-like-its-for-the-gt-r/) 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 applies for ‘R-Hybrid’ trademark, but what is it for? originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 13:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=8diT3CpRudI:MktcJLNSh8g:wF9xT3WuBAs http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=8diT3CpRudI:MktcJLNSh8g:V_sGLiPBpWU
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/8diT3CpRudI