I'm all for exploring new technologies that help us save gas, but I think Nissan has gone a little too far with their "Eco Pedal." This new technology calculates the most fuel efficient rate of acceleration and then fights back against the driver's foot when it feels that rate has been exceeded. Nissan claims that the system can improve fuel efficiency by as much as 10 percent, which is why they plan on implementing it into their cars next year. As asinine and unsafe as all of this sounds, at least Nissan had the good sense to implement an on / off switch. [Detroit News via Jalopnik]

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The Top Gear crew is in Japan for this week's episode and they've got another heated race for us: A Nissan GT-R R35, a gadget car by dynamic handling and Playstation inspired dashboard vs. a bullet train, running both from Japan's northern Hakui-Shi coast to Tokyo. With no surprise ol' Clarkson is driving the fiery beast while Hammond and May are left travelling Japanese public transportation. I'm not gonna spoil the race for ya though, but Jalopnik has the results for you. [Jalopnik]

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To help its engineers better understand the challenges that the elderly have behind the wheel (and feed the fears of Japan's midlife crisis population), Nissan has developed an "old suit" simulating stiff movements, blurred vision, bad balance and extra weight (probably to simulate weaker strength). It all makes sense to us, save for the harsh generalisation of the warp-around eyewear. Can't we get this engineer a pair of blurry contacts or something? Maybe some that give him a sexier eye colour, even? It's already embarrassing enough to drive 40 in a 60 while soiling a diaper, trust us on this one. [reuters]

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It's no secret Giz loves the GT-R. We consider it the unofficial car of Gizmodo, actually. So imagine our collective giddiness when we heard that the Japanese model has a feature that uses GPS to detect when it's on a race track, prompting the Engine Control Unit to disable the speed limiter (which holds the engine at 111 mph in Japan).

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We're gonna go a little ubergeek on you for a moment and celebrate that Sony is using CMOS video cameras for Nissan's upcoming "around view monitor," a camera system giving you an overhead view of your car for parking and moments when you just want to look like OJ on the highway. These cameras grab 1.3MP at 30 frames per second. No, the specs aren't amazing. But here's why we're excited.

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Fast lane daily has a video of the Nissan GT-R, with rare footage of that amazing instrument cluster designed by Gran Turismo game designers. Fast forward past the talking head to witness footage of the boost gauge, lateral and longitudinal G-forces (over time!), among many other stats, at your fingertips. Might have been better to build this stuff into HUD, as you don't want to be staring at the digital cluster pack for longer than you need to in a 3-second car. [Fast Lane Daily]

As car geek icons go, there's the Tesla, the Prius, and for me the Japanese Nissan GT-R supercar, which was unveiled at the LA Auto Show yesterday. Ray at Jalop calls it the GTR-Zilla, but I'll prematurely call it geek car of the coming year, lack of electric power be damned. I swear, this post gets gadgety somewhere through.

He keeps telling me the Corvette Z06 will kill it dead, and who am I to argue with a car meat head like Ray. But I still love this thing. A lot of that has to do with the instrument cluster, designed in conjunction with game-designers from the Playstation's Gran Turismo series, pushing a driver into stat and chart overload. A lot of that also has to do with the factory-spec's insane 480HP from a twin-turbo charged V6. Of course, getting that power to the ground for it's 3.5-second zero-to-sixty time takes a lot of rubber or a lot of technology, and in this case it has to do with an increasingly complex electronically-managed AWD system that in detailed function is one of the last remaining tech secrets of the car.

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If Nissan has anything to say about it, soon all soccer mums will be James Bonds, changing the colour of their car with the flip of a switch. That's because Nissan is developing a paramagnetic iron oxide paint polymer. Using an electrical charge, the arrangement of iron oxide crystals can be tweaked, adjusting the car's color. (It just so happens that metal-bodied cars make for excellent conductive surfaces.) But we're really excited over Nissan's surely bogus but juicy claim to have the technology on the market extremely soon, by 2010 if possible. Oh...except there's one catch.

Touching the car electrocutes you. A small amount of current is always needed to maintain the arrangement of iron oxide (your custom car color). So when you leave your car parked/off, the car turns white. Now imagine your white car times 5000 during your next IKEA excursion. Yeah, it'll be like Florida, everywhere you go.

If you live in Japan and drive a stripy Nissan Micra (March), we are so sorry. Still, if you desperately want an NEC Nissan branded laptop to match said vehicle, you are in luck. NEC has just announced an equally grotesque laptop, finished with enough stripes to create an accomplished rock band.

Beyond the eccentric exterior and a few strategically placed Nissan tags, the ¥120 498 ($1020) laptop is a run of the mill LaVie G model. The device packs a 1.8GHz Sempron processor, 512MB RAM, 15.4" widescreen display and runs Windows Vista Home Basic. Our advice on this gadget; look (for a short period as it may burn your eyes), but do not (under any circumstance) touch. And you thought life couldn't get worse; a Nissan Micra and a matching laptop—be brave; it'll be OK in the end. [Digital World Tokyo]

This is the interior of the new twin-turbocharged V6 2009 Nissan GT-R, a monster supercar, chicks-with-leather-and-attitude magnet and a wonder of engineering which we would probably only drive in the next Gran Turismo. Ironically, anyone who buys one starting tomorrow will be playing Gran Turismo too. All the time, in fact, since the multifunction display that is the star of its interior was designed with Polyphony Digital, the developers of the famous PlayStation GT games. And it shows, because it just looks awesome up close:

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