The most interesting race car ever to take part in Le Mans 24 Hours, the DeltaWing racer, has found an engine. It’s a race-prepared 1.6-litre four-cylinder engine, featuring direct petrol injection and a turbocharger for maximum fuel efficiency. The engine is as radical as the car itself, which is now officially called the Nissan DeltaWing.

While the car will compete at Le Mans big race this year, it won’t be classified in any of the categories. If they had a fighter jet lookalike class, it could have been classified, but they don’t.

Another reason it won’t be classified is because that 1.6 liter DIG-T (Direct Injection Gasoline – Turbocharged) unit has only 300bhp, half of the LMP1 and LMP2 cars. It is in fact the same engine they put the the range-topping Nissan Juke DIG-T. So yes, it’s more of a business opportunity for Nissan to get media attention for its engine, but hey. It will be awesome to see this magnificent looking car out there on the track.

“As motor racing rulebooks have become tighter over time, racing cars look more and more similar and the technology used has had less and less relevance to road car development. Nissan DeltaWing aims to change that and we were an obvious choice to become part of the project,” said Andy Palmer, Executive Vice President, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.

“But this is just the start of our involvement. Nissan DeltaWing embodies a vast number of highly-innovative ideas that we can learn from. At the same time, our engineering resources and commitment to fuel efficiency leadership via our PureDrive strategy will help develop DeltaWing into a testbed of innovation for Nissan.”