Out on the dragstrip, one hardly expects the car kicking ass and taking names to be an old ‘72 Datsun 1200. Especially when the losers are driving BMWs, Corvettes and Ferraris. But those guys didn’t get pawned by any ol’ Datsun…this one’s electric!

It seems a bit like a paradox. Drag racing is flame-dipped muscle cars with bikini-clad hood ornaments spread over the hood. Electric cars, not so much. But John “Plasma Boy” Wayland’s White Zombie is a game changer. It goes from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds! In fact, it can take a quarter-mile in 11.46 seconds reaching a top speed of 114 mph - that’s a world record. And it’s street-legal.

The White Zombie is powered by two motors; motors that are usually used to operate forklifts. It’s filled up with over 60 batteries that occupy both the trunk and the back seat. All of this gives the White Zombie about 300 hp, and the ability to beat every combustion engine it comes up against. It takes about 20 minutes to fully charge the car, and it can get up to 40 miles on a full charge.

So how does a ‘72 Datsun knock down a souped up Corvette? Well, electric vehicles have an abundance of torque and they have it all from a standing stop. So they just explode off the starting line. I think it’s safe to say that the future of racing is green.

At 10:30 a.m. United Arab Emirates time (GMT+4), expert driver Mohammed Ben Sulayem who is FIA Vice President and President of the Automobile and Touring Club of the UAE pointed the aggressive nose of the Nissan GT-R at the mountain, set the car's electronics to full launch mode and dropped the twin clutches to unleash 485PS (357kW) through the car's permanent all-wheel drive system. Just a few minutes later having negotiated the mountain's 22 corners and 7kms, Ben Sulayem crossed the line to set a first ever official time for ascending the mountain of 3 minutes and 39.008 seconds.

"That was fun!" exclaimed Sulayem at the conclusion of the run. "I have been familiar with the development of the GT-R for sometime now and to achieve this first ever officially recorded time on the Jebel Hafeet mountain road is a fitting event to mark the regional launch of what I believe is one of the most capable performance cars ever developed. This car is true to its design philosophy of being a super car for anyone, anywhere, at anytime. Timed "hill climb" events like these have been popular - especially in Europe - since the very early days of the motor car and when Nissan set a new record time around the Nordschliefe at the Nürburgring we immediately thought a similar feat in our region would be appropriate...and so it has proved," he concluded.

The Jebel Hafeet mountain road on the outskirts of Al Ain in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi rises approximately 4,000 ft (1,219 m) with 22 corners and three lanes (two climbing and one descending). The road scales the mountain and ends at a scenic parking lot and passes a hotel and a palace on the way. A seven-km stretch of the mountain road was used for the GT-R Jebel Hafeet Challenge.

For this very special event, Nissan received the permission of the Abu Dhabi authorities to temporarily close the road, while under the auspices of the Automobile & Touring Club of the UAE (ATCUAE) the closed road was monitored by marshals to Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) safety standards. Official timing of the run was also conducted to regional FIA standards.

Ohio based Switzer Performance Innocation has developed a Nissan GT-R performance package called P700 that supposedly delivers more than 700-HP on 93-octane gas.

Tests so far have shown that the street-legal performance package does infact go beyond the limits of the standard ECU calibration, but 700-HP? For real? Sort of. In the end, with P700 package installed, the SPI Nissan GT-R manages to produce more than 626 all-wheel HP with 383 lb-ft of all-wheel torque. Impressive, but I’d like to see them bump it up just a little bit more.

Switzer’s P700 GTR package should set you back a decent USD $16,650.

Forget the GT-R saloon and meet what you get when you combine a 35 with a R35 front end: A StaGT-R at the Nagoya Auto Trend show. Its not the first time Nissan GT-Rs to have been converted in Japan but it’s certainly the first time I’ve seen a conversion of a new Nissan GT-R.

It’s confirmed: Nissan is making a return to FIA GT racing. The news came from Nissan Motors Australia Managing Director and CEO Dan Thompson at the press day of the 2009 Melbourne Motor Show.

Nissan will submit the R35 Nissan GT-R into the FIA GT 2010 Championship series while British company Gigawave MotorSports will be teaming up with NISMO on an non-championship entry to check, test and develop the racing GT-R.

The specs on race-ready GT-R haven’t been officially revealed, but there’s a possibility that NISMO will drop the twin-turbo’d V6 in favor of the 4.5-liter VK45D8 V8. Output is estimated to be between 540-590 hp and 450-500 lb-ft of torque, with a curb weight as low as 3,000 pounds.

A nice little Datsun 240z fitted with a Toyota 2JZ engine. It looks quite standard from the outside but its mightily quick, it manages 144mph in 9.2 seconds!

Japanese tuners HKS and Power Enterprises have revealed rival takes on the art of extracting maximum performance from Nissan’s latest GT-R.

First up is the street-legal GT570 package from HKS, one of Japan’s longer-established tuner firms with a history of GT-R tweakery running back to the 1989 R32 model.

The GT570 Sport Package is a development of an existing GT570 Racing Package designed originally for the track, which includes a new exhaust system, reprogrammed ECU, upgraded plumbing for the turbo and intercooler, a sequential blow-off valve kit, reinforced actuators and new spark plugs. Designed to boost output to 570PS at around 6,600rpm, the Racing Package is not road legal as it fails to meet emissions standards. Hence the arrival of the GT570 Sport Package, which adds a new high-flow stainless steel catalytic converter and upgraded wastegate actuators to bring tailpipe emissions within accepted limits. Parts will be available from HKS stockists later this year for both 2009 and 2010 model GT-Rs..

Meanwhile Power Enterprises has taken a more radical approach to ‘ultimate’ GT-R performance, launching its awesome Quad-Charged version at the recent Tokyo tuning show.

The company claims up to 600hp from the conversion, which basically adds a pair of Rotrex C30-94 superchargers to the existing twin IHI turbocharger installation, as well as high-flow fuel injectors and a massaged ECU.

The two engine-driven compressors are designed to pack greater low-end grunt into the GT-R’s delivery before the turbos get up to speed, apparently for ‘maximum attack’ circuit time trials. Good work!

Well whaddya know. Randy Rodriguez, one of the key designers of the Nissan 370Z, is an S30 fan at heart, according to this Canadian Press article. He’s owned 10 of them, in fact, and currently drives 1977 280Z that he restored himself. He says that his sketches were heavily influenced by the 240Z and the new GT-R. You might take issue with his statement that the 240Z and 350Z were the best Zs, but it’s good to know there such die-hard Datsun enthusiasts  working at Nissan.

The forthcoming Nissan 200SX replacement is the first major casualty of Carlos Ghosn's dramatic cutbacks, a company source has confirmed.

Nissan has been developing plans for a new, compact, rear-wheel-drive sportscar for some years. The Silvia project has been most visible as the Foria (Tokyo 2005) and Urge (Detroit 2006) concepts, but work has been continuing behind the scenes.

Monday's announcement of severe financial difficulties at the company, including a £612m third-quarter loss, also brought news of cutbacks to future model programmes, but it had been assumed until now that the 200SX was safe.

Ghosn wishes to concentrate all the company's development efforts on small and medium-sized cars. This will include an electric Prius rival, due to make its debut next year.

Some image of the new Nissan GT-R SpecV