When Harley Earl designed the Corvette, there’s no way he could have imagined the car would have become such an iconic vehicle that’s been built in so many different ways. Brent Stein’s Nissan-powered C7 is one of the coolest interpretations of how to make a Corvette go fast that we’ve ever seen.

The Al-Anabi Performance (AAP) team was the last group of mad scientists to create a ridiculous six-banger Corvette, which shook up the small-tire racing world. Stein’s Corvette isn’t using a monstrous 500 cubic-inch V6 for power like the AAP car, but instead, it has a TB48 Nissan-based engine under the hood. The TB48 uses a billet block, OEM cylinder head, and was built by Wade Stevens at Maximum Performance. Stevens tunes the car through the FuelTech ECU that controls the engine.

Stein really cranked up the cool factor of his Corvette when he decided to use a Liberty transmission to transfer power back to the Mickey Thompson tires. Stein has been working with Mark Menscer at Menscer Motorsports to get the Corvette’s suspension dialed in. The best pass Stein has recorded with this interesting combination is a 4.34 at 179 mph.

So what would drive a person to put an inline six-cylinder engine out of a Nissan SUV into a Corvette? The answer is simple: weight. Stein can take advantage of all the weight breaks provided to non-V8 engines by using the TB48 mill. It’s going to take some extra work to get the car sorted out, but this combination could be lethal when Stein gets it running to its full potential.

Check out this video from ProTreeVideo that shows the Corvette making some hits in Super Street class trim.