If you grew up with Gran Turismo, the GT-One was a serious GOAT contender.
Today, my friends, is a good day, because it’s one that Gran Turismo fans like myself have been anticipating for a very long time. March’s update has just been formally revealed, and it’ll go live in the early hours of Thursday morning. As with most of Gran Turismo 7’s monthly updates, this one adds three cars, but one of them is very special. It’s the Toyota GT-One—the late-’90s Le Mans prototype that competed in the 24-hour race for overall victory. The GT-One is also what I consider to be the best-looking race car of all time. Did I mention it was my birthday last weekend?
Sorry to make this one about me, but you don’t understand how long I’ve waited for this. The GT-One first appeared in the series in Gran Turismo 2, which offered both 1998 and 1999 incarnations of the machine, as well as the even rarer homologation-special road version. The ’98 cars had cooler liveries, but the ’99 edition was more successful, as the No. 3 car driven by the all-Japanese team of Ukyo Katayama, Toshio Suzuki, and the Drift King himself, Keiichi Tsuchiya, finished 2nd overall and won its LMGTP class at Le Mans in that sophomore attempt.
Sadly, that was the last time the GT-One contested the global endurance circuit, as Toyota moved its resources to Formula 1, which would prove a waste of time and money. When you’ve built the prettiest race car that’s ever existed, why on Earth would you throw it in the bin like that? Shameful.
At any rate, the GT-One has been a no-show in Gran Turismo for a while now. It was a series mainstay through the sixth entry, though during those dark PlayStation 3 years, the car was relegated to a “Standard Model” of egregiously low quality. It skipped GT Sport as well, so this is the first time we’ve seen the car recreated with Polyphony Digital’s intense attention to detail in decades, taking advantage of modern hardware’s capabilities. It looks so good, and it’ll likely be a worthy adversary for the 1999 Mercedes-Benz CLK-LM and 1998 McLaren F1 GTR in the Gr.2 class.
There’s no track here either—just a Jaguar Extra Menu and three new World Circuit races, including a World Touring Car 900 event at Circuit de la Sarthe. I can live with that; the Toyota GT-One is coming home.
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