Nissan Virtual Supercar
When I was growing up, I used to play a lot of video games. (note: Like, A LOT of video games.) My favorite games were typically racing games, and in particular, the games where I could use the custom builder to create my own race car. In most cases, these cars were more grotesque than cool, kind of like “The Homer” from the Simpsons. But sometimes you’d make a really cool car and think, “Man, they should actually make that thing for real.”
Fast-forward twenty years to the latest edition of PlayStation 3’s Gran Turismo franchise (called Gran Turismo 6), and the Nissan Virtual Supercar Concept.
Gran Turismo, for the uninformed, is a racing video game, popular among gamers and gearheads alike for its stark reality and for the wonderment found in all the souped-up cars. For the game’s newest iteration, Nissan created a concept car, called the “Concept 2020 Vision Gran Turismo,” that will soon be available as an add-on for the game. It will join supercars from other automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Mitsubishi, and has already engendered a large amount of speculation as to whether or not there might be more to this concept than Nissan is letting on.
This speculation exists for two interrelated reasons. First, the Concept 2020, as it has come be known, bears unmistakable Nissan badging, and it isn’t hard to see beneath the futuristic lines and see the muscular fenders and rear-swept posture of Nissan’s current GT-R and the classic Z-series. Could this potentially be more than just a concept? Could the “2020,” as so many conspiracy theorists have suggested, not be referring to visual acuity, but rather to the year 2020?
And this leads us to the second reason for speculation, which is this: automakers are undoubtedly more likely to use computer design today than they had in past years, and are able to simulate much of the performance of a car prior to ever placing it into an actual wind tunnel or road test. What they can’t simulate, however, is public reaction. And the Gran Turismo unveiling has shown strong emotional reaction to this vehicle, which begs the question, Would an automaker trust the reaction to a virtual vehicle enough to make an actual one?
While we may not know this answer–at least not until the year 2020, wink, wink–we can definitely experience the vehicles that gave way to its inspiration. So pay us a visit at Avondale Nissan near Phoenix, and take a spin in the 2014 Nissan 370Z or the Nissan GT-R. And, to take a “drive” in the Concept 2020, you can find it is an add-on to Gran Turismo 6 in July.
