There’s good news from Japan! It appears the ongoing global pandemic thing (Coronavirus, or something…) doesn’t seem to have curtailed the madness that comes out of Liberty Walk’s tuning shop in Nagoya.

See, you might think with all this economic uncertainty that LW’s brain-out leader Kato-san may have started playing it safe; turning down his wild winged, rivet-arched, band-sawed supercars and gone for something a bit more, erm, mellow. But he hasn’t. Instead, he’s ratcheted up the crazy thanks to his latest GT-R-faced Copen.

Now, we’ve seen what the crazy cats at Liberty Walk can do with a tiny Daihatsu Copen before. But just as a reminder, through the magic of determination and an angle grinder, LW can graft a squished Nissan GT-R’s face and backside onto the tiny two-seat convertible.

Then they rivet flared arches on to it, slam it to the ground, add the biggest wing they can find and finish it in chrome. Because Japan. Because Liberty Walk. Now they’ve rolled it in an old-school Marlboro livery, so it looks like a titchy, angry cigarette packet. Yay.

Unfortunately, Liberty Walk hasn’t managed to shrink a Nissan GT-R’s twin-turbo V6 into the package yet, so you’ll have to make do with a 658cc, three-cylinder producing 64hp and 92Nm of torque.

Which makes it highly thrashable, pretty much all the time. And considering you can have a five-speed manual with an available limited-slip differential and Bilstein, it’d be a little riot to drive. Which is exactly what we plan to do, when this Coronavirus thing blows over.

STORY Rowan Horncastle