NISSAN REVEALS COMPACT SPORT CONCEPT

This is the new Nissan Compact Sport Concept, a kind of Micra GTI, that's just been unveiled at the Shanghai motor show.

Now, the Chinese aren't exactly renowned for their love of hot hatches, and the cutesy Micra probably wouldn't be your first choice for a choice at the best of times, but nevertheless here it is.

The Compact Sport Concept is the first car to be jointly developed by both Nissan's Japanese design HQ and Nissan's new design studio in Beijing and is targeted squarely at young customers in emerging markets.

Beyond the beefy styling there's actually a bit of poke, too. Powering the Compact Sport is a direct-injection turbocharged 1.6-ltre four-cylinder motor with 188bhp 177lb ft of torque though.

But before you go wishing this was set to pop up in your local Nissan dealer (stranger things have happened) be warned; there is more weirdness. Why? Because Nissan has seen fit to equip the Sport Compact with a CVT gearbox. Okay, so the Xtronic CVT-M6 has a manual mode, but the letters C,V and T really don't sit too comfortably with the words 'hot' and 'hatch'.