Lexus Sport Concept Debuts in Gran Turismo 7 as Tokyo-Exclusive Simulator

A surprising new car is technically available to drive in Gran Turismo 7, but accessing it involves some unusual hoops and a fair bit of mystery.

The car is the Lexus Sport Concept. Its inclusion isn’t a total shock, given that it’s a Toyota product and Toyota has a long-standing history with Polyphony Digital — it was the first brand to sign on for the original Gran Turismo.

Unveiled this past August at the tongue-tripping “The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering” as part of Pebble Beach Automotive Week, the concept previews the company’s future sporting products. It follows the 2022 Electrified Sports Concept, but its actual powertrain has remained a mystery.

Here’s the biggest catch: you can’t drive it on your console at home.

To get behind the wheel, you must visit the Tokyo Big Sight exhibition center for the “Tokyo Future Tour 2035” event. There, attendees can sit in a full-size, physical model of the concept for their “test drive.”

A video from YouTube channel Design Channel shows presenter “Koh” doing just that, in what’s called the “Lexus Real x Virtual Driving Concept”, but it does raise several more questions than it answers.

Before getting into the car, Koh has to go through a short presentation which appears to show the static car in a variety of CGI locations, before switching to what looks like more mixed-reality/CGI shots and a clip shot inside the simulator rig.

Once suitably attired — with gloves to protect the concept’s steering wheel — the drive gets under way, comprising two laps of Fuji International Speedway’s full layout, but yet more questions arise.

Along with being locked to bumpercam, so no part of the actual car model is ever shown, the Sport Concept sounds rather a lot like the existing Lexus LFA V10. However it also has no gears: the display reads “D” throughout, while the engine note constantly rises.

That suggests it’s a single-speed ‘box attached to an electric motor with the V10 note added as a synthetic effect. Other, recent images of the interior of the real thing show a manual option with discrete gears, so perhaps this is a simulated manual in the vein of the Hyundai Ioniq 5N. That’s not replicated in the GT7 car, as vehicles tend to be locked into their highest performance mode.

Also worth noting in this exhibit is the fact that the rear-view mirror is a video display and shows the in-game rear-view mirror, while the various display screens all show information in the Gran Turismo typeface.

All-in, this looks like it’s a highly custom build of Gran Turismo 7 — one of the screens also shows the phrase “Powered by VR Cockpit by Sony” — but the lack of a physical model of the car in driving and the placeholder sound does lead us to wonder if the vehicle has actually been modelled for the game.

Of course, the upcoming Spec III update for GT7 still has four of its eight cars under wraps and the Lexus Sport Concept is one we could very much see filling one of those spots. We’ll likely have to wait until next weekend’s GT World Series event in Los Angeles, where fans can preview Spec III, to find out if that’s the case.

In the meantime, you’ve got until the Tokyo Future Tour 2035 finishes on November 9 to head over to Japan and book a session with Lexus if you want to try it out yourself.

Autodesk VRED Professional 2024.2.1

See more articles on Lexus.