The United Arab Emirates have shown a propensity for pressing high-performance sports cars – supercars even – into service with the local police. But it's not just law-enforcement that gets high-speed first-response vehicles.

The ambulance service in Dubai has just added two rather high-powered vehicles to its motor pool in the forms of a Nissan GT-R and C7 Corvette Grand Sport. Hardly what we'd think of as the most suitable platforms for ambulance conversions, but this isn't the first time Dubai's emergency medical service has employed sports cars to get to the scene in a hurry.

Along with the usual vans, trucks, and sport-utes, the Dubai Corporation for Ambulance Services has employed Ford Mustangs, Dodge Challengers, Nissan 370Zs, and even a Lotus Evora and Polaris Slingshot as first-response vehicles.

These in addition to (and quite separate from) the exotic wheels that the Dubai Police Force has used to patrol the highways, including Aston Martins, Bentleys, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Maseratis, McLarens, Porsches, Rolls-Royces, even Bugattis and Paganis. There are Corvettes and GT-Rs there, too, but what makes headlines for the ambulance service simply round out the field for the police department.

Now we wouldn't expect the paramedics in the oil-rich Gulf emirate to be transporting patients to the hospital in their new sports cars, but they ought to do the trick to get first-responders to the scene as quick as possible. And we doubt they'd have to worry about how much fuel they'd be burning in the process, either.

Despite its tiny size of just 32,300 square miles (or roughly the size of South Carolina), the United Arab Emirates (of which Dubai is the largest and most populous) ranks as the eighth largest oil producer and the fifth richest country in the world, with a GDP of around $700 billion.