As a virtual car designed to run in the video game series, which as of April 2008 had shipped a staggering fifty million units, it begs to be built.
It’s not often the French would ever heed the call of the “punters” or in this case, the “gamers” but that’s exactly what’s happened, and Citroen have gone and built the GT. Yes, you can drive it on real tarmac to the shops.
But Citroen had some help with the GT, Kazunori Yamauchi who heads up Polyphony Digital – the outfit who created the Sony Play station game, collaborated with Citroen’s designer Takumi Yamamoto and created the virtual racer, without any intention of the car ever seeing the light of day.
Featured in ‘Grand Turismo’ the GT is powered by an electric drivetrain with a fuel cell and produces no ‘dirty’ emissions. The ‘real thing’ however, favours a ‘tuned’ 560bhp V8, said to be race bred and very quick.
Those who have driven the car say that it feels like four seconds or better, and the engine note is loud enough to wake the dead, given there is no sound insulation whatsoever.
At a massive five metres plus, with 21-inch diamond-effect alloy wheels and huge air intakes, it’s a menacing looking thing, but at the same time gorgeous.
Access to the star wars like interior is via scissor doors and reveals a copper-like substance covering the dash and a steering wheel, which would look more at home in a Formula One car of the future and house the shifter buttons, with a roof mounted display showing the selected gear ratio.
You can’t buy a Citroen GT yet, but you can drive the virtual car, that’s if you can earn one million credits on Grand Turismo 5: Prologue. Start your engines!
Citroen, the masters of avant guard car design have been climbing their way back to the style council for several years, with designs like the C4, C5 and superb looking C6. Let’s just hope and pray that some of the design cues that that have been realised in the GT, get a ‘go’ in the slightly more affordable department.
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