When Francisco Gurule isn't indulging in his pastime shooting photos of his '97 Alpine Silver, Limited Edition, 15th Anniversary Supra, he can be found either driving it or working on it. Franciso says 99 percent of the work involved in getting the stock-block 2JZ-GTE to hit the 718 whp, 577 lb-ft of torque mark was accomplished by him.

Las Vegas is a crazy, crazy place. This is common knowledge already, thanks to Vegas' healthy reputation as the headquarters for sin. But don't think for a second that alcohol and gambling are the only after-school specials going down in excess. The town is just as much a haven for speed addicts as it is for poker addicts. Nestled away from the bright lights and billboards of the tourist-ridden main strip is Factor X Racing, one of the nation's premiere builders of turbocharged Acura NSX's. It's not uncommon to see Factor X-tuned mid-engine rocket ships cruising through the streets of Las Vegas, all of which are packing north of 500 hp.

It's been three and a half decades since Datsun first astonished the world with their mass-appeal 240Z. With a few exceptions (perhaps most notably the Toyota 2000GT), this was truly the first accessible Japanese sports car. Also, the fact that it humbled cars double or even triple its price was almost just icing on the cake. The Z-car has been making waves ever since, when turbocharged or naturally aspirated.

If there's one thing to be said about drifting, it's that the sideways sport is a very subjective form of motorsport. There are no lap times, no sectors and no flagged finishes. It all just boils down to the driver, his opponent and the almighty judging table. Lurid slides and billowing clouds of vaporized tire can wow the judges into a win, but the psychological factor of tandem drifting cannot be denied. When it comes down to a heads-up drift battle, forcing your opponent into making a mistake is key.

Passion. A human condition that affects all of us in one way or another. Some people like to collect stamps, others to listen to classical music, but for our friend Andy at Powervehicles.com, it's drifting. Andy came to Japan a few years back from his native Scotland to do one thing, and one thing only: Drift. And we're not talking about your monthly excursion to some semi-abandoned parking lot with a drift-track, we mean serious drifting. His commitment to this innovative form of motorsport deserves respect because not only did he move halfway across the world to Japan to pursue his love for the art of going sideways, he also set up his business exporting cars here. When not working, Andy is prepping his BN Sports built Nissan 180SX full-drift car for his next trip to the racetrack. We met up with him during one of his outings at a Motorsports.com drift event in the Mobara circuit in Chiba-prefecture.

As the winner of the 2005 D1 Grand Prix Championship, as well as the 2006 United Kingdom D1 exhibition match, Yasuyuki Kazama is no rookie driver. Having appeared in Best Motoring, Top Gear, JDM Option and more magazines than you can shake a stick at, Kazama is one of the most recognizable drivers in the D1 ranks. Having heard about drifting at the young age of 17, Kazama has now risen to become one of the superstars of the drifting world, and is as well known for his twin-drift technique as he is for his out-the-door "rodeo ride" parade lap.

Having all but conquered the world and crowned itself as the king of the import world, the Nissan Skyline GT-R was put out to pasture. Although legendary, the GT-R's potent RB26DETT power plant, all-wheel drive system and muscular tones are all now dead. There is a new GT-R lurking on the horizon, but for now, the only car bearing the Skyline nameplate is naturally aspirated. Sold as the Infiniti G35 here in the United States, the smoothly styled Nissan coupe is known as the Skyline in Japan. Rumors abound that the new GT-R will be a variant of the Skyline coupe, stuffed with a turbocharged engine. But what if you took a current G35 and crammed a tuned RB26 engine into it? Would you then have yourself the new Skyline GT-R, or would you just be labeled a mad scientist?

We've said it before and we'll say it again: The Skyline GT-R is an outright amazing machine. You may think that it's just the one sided attitude of uppity auto magazines that the GT-R is all that, but the car's potential is undeniable. Take this BNR34 Skyline GT-R, tuned by Autech Tsukada. Weighing in at more than a ton and a half, Autech's R34 is still able to clock Tsukuba Circuit in under a minute, and in street form no less.

Building a fast car is one thing, building a show car is another. Combine the two and you have a pretty hard job on your hands. Ogura Racing Clutches (ORC for short) has been in the aftermarket tuning game since the beginning. Their lineup of racing and street clutches has for years earned them the respect they deserve, and their experience in the racing field has helped greatly advance their products. And so for 2006 they thought it would be a good idea to go all out and create a car that would not only attract crowds during this year's show season but also perform like no other on the road: Enter the ORC twin-charged 350Z.

If we could have a drum roll please, we'd like to set the stage to introduce Turbo's latest project vehicle: the Toyota Yaris. We have patiently waited for years for Japan's Toyota Vitz (Europe's Toyota Yaris) to make the leap across the pond into our welcoming arms. (In fact, long time Turbo readers might even remember a feature we did on a Vitz that Toyota had loaned to us when they were considering bringing the Yaris over to the United States back in 2000.) We would have never guessed that the Yaris would go into production here since Toyota opted to bring the similarly pint size Scion xA out. When the xA came out we thought that meant the U.S. door on the Vitz was forever closed.

Input an inline six block, single-turbo pressurization and four-digit horsepower figures, and your cerebral cortex conjures up images of a Supra 2JZ-GTE engine with a stand-by default of a Skyline RB26ETT. Imagine the surreal rampant misfiring synapses when an S52 call sign is revealed. The S52 engine code identifies a BMW powerplant, in this case the engine from an E36 M3. The E36 M3 debuted in 1995 with a 3.0-liter variant of the S52. In 1996 displacement jumped to 3.2 liters, where it stayed until the end of the E36's run in 1999.

You're fast and you know it. You've spent countless hours pouring over compressor maps in order to pick the perfect turbo, and you just got the engine tuned dead-on perfect. Suspension, tires, brakes, chassis stiffness - all figured out. You hit the road and nothing can touch you, not even the odd nitrous-fed V8 minivans lurking around. But there's one thing that is always beyond your reach, one world that lives on a whole different plane of acceleration and speed: The land of the sport bike.

I'm not really sure why I wanted to buy a GT-R. I've never really been a guy that likes a lot of attention, but I couldn't get over the fact that in my opinion there was always a Japanese car out there that could outperform the Supra. I had already gone 10.32 @ 141 in my Supra. I just wanted to be faster than that, period. I guess I felt like if I wanted to be faster at the drag strip I needed to be able to get out of the hole faster. My thought process led me to the epiphany that an AWD Supra would be the ultimate car. I guess I figured the GT-R to basically be an AWD Supra. I had heard all the stories of how strong the blocks were and how they could make the same power as the Supras with less mods, the basic stuff you read on the internet or in magazines. So I went on the hunt for one." - Jake Diehl

Everything is big in Texas: the bravado, the beers, the houses, the steak dinners (free if you can eat them with out a doggie bag, or a barf bag for that matter), even the horizon looms large.

The tuning game is a hard one to play. It takes lots of dedication just to stay afloat, but it takes a hell of a lot more to succeed. There are only a handful of tuning shops in Japan that have managed the latter over the years, and RE Amemiya is one of them. But what makes this rotary engine specialist stand out from the rest is its involvement in racing.

When we say hotter than hell, we mean that 100% literally, figuratively, whatever - it was hot in every sense of the word. I have never been in such desert heat before in my life - then again neither had most of the D1 drivers. With the mercury hitting 112 and track temperatures hitting 150, the drivers entered a whole new blistering territory.

2006 is the year of a true comeback. The extremely rare, limited edition BNR32-based HKS Zero-R has been re-released sporting a fully re-engineered engine, transmission and suspension. Could this be the ultimate street-going GT-R? The history of this unique car starts back in the early '90s when HKS' headquarters in Japan decided to do what tuning shops such as RUF where doing in Germany, and that is create bespoke high-performance streetcars. The project started with four cars being built. However, when the time came to register them as one-off models not tied with the Nissan brand, the problems began. Due to Japanese legislation at the time, HKS was required to crash test a number of cars in order to obtain road homologation. HKS decided to abandon the project as it would have proven too expensive, totaling Y13,000,000 ($116,400) per car. In the end, HKS kept three of the cars. The fourth was purchased by the Sultan of Brunei, who had it shipped home to join his extensive collection of exotic cars.

When you think about drag racing, the two most likely cars you will probably picture in your mind are the Skyline GT-R and the Toyota Supra. These big cars with big engines can make well in excess of 1000 horsepower in the right spec and can shoot down the strip in anywhere from low 10s to mid 7s - like the HKS R33 GT-R.

When hearing the term "throw the book at him," it's not usually a sign of good things to come. However, as evidenced by the Blue-By-You Evo IX gracing these pages, it doesn't have to be a bad experience. Luckily for this Diamond Star, the book in question was the Power Enterprise catalog. This wicked whip was hit square in the jaw with everything the book had to offer. Perhaps the most eye-popping aspect of this Evo is the shear number of Power Enterprise parts on the car. We tallied up 28 products and there may be more.

It may be hard to believe, but there are still some people left in this world that haven't heard of JUN Auto Mechanic. One of Japan's most well-known tuners, JUN has applied its horsepower-inducing magic to such cars as the Skyline GT-R, Lancer Evolution, Fairlady/300ZX, Impreza WRX and Silvia. With a keen eye set on building shop vehicles that are the complete package through and through, JUN Auto regularly takes its demo cars out and proves them at the Bonneville Salt Flats, Tsukuba Circuit and on the drag strip.

I've always found it interesting to discover what professional drivers like to keep in their own garage. Especially drifters. I believe that if some of the best drivers in the business pick a specific car then it's obviously for a very good reason. For example, Keiichi Tsuchiya owns a late-generation Honda NSX-R. If anyone has ever had the pleasure of driving this amazing machine, then it's obvious why the great master himself has one. So it was with great anticipation that I went to see this very special Nissan S15 Silvia Spec-R. Talking with the T&E chaps at a recent D1 round in Japan, I discovered they had just began putting the finishing touches to Nobuteru Taniguchi's very own streetcar. Sporting the new Vertex LanG Body Kit, this deep red S15 is certainly a looker. Nob loves his Nissan drift cars, and in addition to this car he has a stunning candy-red 180SX, which he often drives to racing events.

Think Sweden and what pops to mind ... meatballs, IKEA furniture, and the Swedish bikini team? Meatballs: Italians do it better. IKEA: they provide stylishly disposable furniture for the masses and more Allen wrenches than any other entity on earth. The Swedish bikini team: well they might have one up on us there. Those ladies definitely rev our engines.

Itinerary
1/10 (W) Depart USA (main group from LAX)
1/11 (Th) Arrival in Tokyo
1/12 (F) All Day at TAS event "Industry & Media Day"
1/13 (S) TAS event (AM); Super Autobacs (PM)
1/14 (S) Twin Link Motegi Tour by RAZO & Nitto
1/15 (M) Depart Tokyo (main group to LAX)

Hands down the world's best present to give an automotive enthusiast is to send him or her to race driving school. Whether it's for Christmas, a birthday, Father's Day or whatever the occasion you can't go wrong with giving someone track lessons. Thankfully, nowadays there are a lot of options when it comes to driving schools. There are packages for NASCAR driving, Formula cars, karting, exotic cars and even ones where you can bring your own vehicle to learn on. In addition to the variety of cars you can choose from, there are driving-type choices: defensive driving, new driver program, racing or, in our case, high performance driving.

In reaction to those who deemed the previous generation of Imprezas as "bugeye", "peanut eye", or absolutely hideous, Subaru unveiled a bold new direction for 2006. The latest edition of the WRC-developed stomper debuted with a triple-section grille that represents the cross-section of an airplane (the historical background of parent company Fuji Heavy Industries) and a pair of headlights that looks strangely similar to BMW's latest designs.