The next time you’re testing a car at Dubai Autodrome, kindly note that turning a metre or two early into the third-gear, right-hand Turn One at the end of the starting straight, is a perfectly safe error to make. Oh sure, it’ll slow you down a little as you correct your line to the apex, but basically, there’s no harm done.

Turning in one or two metres late is, however, a completely different story. That’s because barely one metre beyond the well-established racing line, lies an inevitable dusting of sand just waiting to teach you a lesson. Now I like driving on sand in powerful four-wheel drives. In fact I thoroughly recommend the experience, particularly when the sand is piled hundreds of metres high, and making good speed means averaging 25kph across the Rub Al Khali. Unfortunately, when the 485 horsepower Nissan Juke-R, allegedly under your control, is one of only two in the world, and the sand you caress at 100kph is just a few millimetres thick, detests the word friction, and does a shockingly good impression of ball bearings on ice, things begin to get interesting. And loose.

But let’s step back from the sand for a moment, back to a point where the marketing guys at Nissan sat around a table in early 2011, under instruction from their senior managers to “come up with a high-profile way of promoting our funky Juke crossover or we’ll slash your expense accounts”. Now that’s serious pressure. “How about a viral video of a pretty girl driving a Juke through a field of sunflowers?” suggested an intern. Hours later she was looking for a new job. “We could paint each wheel a different colour and call it the Juke Rainbow,” proclaimed another. He’s not been heard from since. And then the quiet one in the corner, the one with oil under his fingernails, the menacing gaze and a scuffed brown leather jacket, whispered, “Let’s carve a GT-R down the centre of its very being, and transplant its beating heart into the chilled carcass of a Juke’s body. We’ll twist and contort its features, paint it as black as a cold winter’s night and call it ‘AAARRRRGGGHHH’.”

The marketing team gave his proposal due consideration. And since he was sitting between them and the room’s only exit, they immediately agreed, although they were careful not to make eye contact whilst doing so. Admittedly I wasn’t there myself, but a friend of a friend’s mate said he was pretty sure that was how it went down. And thus the Juke-R was conceived. (The name was shortened so the badge would fit the rear hatch, but the concept’s the same.) Now a company the size of Nissan isn’t exactly geared up to make one-off, or even two-off specials like the Juke-R, so they gave the job to trusted experts RML of Wellingborough, UK. RML has previously built cars that have won the World and British Touring Car Championships, European Le Mans Series Championships, British Rally Championships and many others. In the past they’d also created the unique mid-engined Micra R and SR specials, so it has a history of producing high-performance, high-profile Nissans.

To make matters more interesting, Nissan told RML they needed two Juke-Rs, one left- and one right-hand drive, in a timescale commensurate with their performance, which is to say, ridiculously quickly. Just 22 weeks later, after RML’s crew had — Godzilla fans look away now — removed the running gear from two Nissan GT-Rs and sliced 250mm out of them to match the Juke’s 2,530mm wheelbase, the cars were delivered on schedule. Fortunately for me, both cars then made their way to the Dubai Autodrome, where they performed Pace Car duties for the 24-hour race last month, and happily they remained there for testing. Thus I was able to experience the pleasure of taking one of these automotive freaks for a blast around a track. And what a blast it was.

As I approached the car, it did strike me that the Juke-R has a look that only its mother could love. In fact if I hadn’t known the true origin of the name, I’d have assumed that the R was an abbreviation of Rhinoceros; with its matt black colouring and bulky armour-plated look, it wouldn’t be out of place on the African plains. At 1,830kg, it’s pretty much the same weight as an adult black rhino, and rhinos are aggressive and surprisingly fast, just like the Juke-R. Of course a rhinoceros isn’t the sort of thing you’d pick a fight with, not unless you could outrun it, and with a 0-100kph time of 3.7 seconds — that’s Ferrari 458 territory — you might find your options rather limited in that respect.