McLaren Reveals Vision Gran Turismo-Inspired Solus GT Track Car

[Samus]

Yeah valid point, at first, but the main thing is that you guys behave questionable in the first place, it’s just that the person this is about isnt present. So yeah I understand that some responses got deleted and I respect that, but this argument isn’t as benefiting yourself as you might think.

What is questionable? Nobody is personally insulting Kaz, we're discussing the project.

 

[NissanR89C]

Because of your post history, your inability to respond to people to people you disagree with without acting like they have a third arm coming out of their ass, the tone of your responses in this thread, your post history towards Imari on this very topic:

And also the fact that you went off on his post in this thread without actually understanding it; and still don't seem to have any understanding of it or any of the posts you're responding to beyond "They are criticizing PD."



No, they don't. The amount of cars in this program that had any development work put into them could be counted on one hand; and I suspect the answer is "only the ones made by Volkswagen-Audi Group." Almost none of them have been "developed". Almost none of them have any existence beyond drawings/a clay model and a press release saying how cool they are. Most of them likely haven't even seen the desk of an engineer in the company. Making up stats isn't development work. Making a clay model that you take to a car show and push to its booth isn't development work. Talking about all the amazing technology that is in a concept car isn't development work. Claiming performance isn't development work. Developing a car is development work. Even the car that was basically a car a manufacturer was already finishing up development on in real life (the Bugatti) has stats in-game as a Vision GT that are laughable. In that respect, the overwhelming majority of the VGT cars are no different than any other point in the past when a car manufacturer has trotted out crazy concept cars that have nothing to do with anything with the brand's past or future and are just there to get people talking about the brand. GM in particular was a master class of doing such a thing in the 1980s.



It's why the attempt to dismiss the Nike from GT4 as somehow different and inferior to the VGT program as done earlier in the thread is such a joke, since most of the cars in this program haven't been any more real than that was and that was also designed by an actual car designer. It doesn't make any functional difference if you claim a car is powered by the natural electrical current of the body of the driver or you say the car is powered by a normal ass V8 that you already make if neither are true.


Yes, and in the context of his comment he was saying that McLaren could (and in the recent glut of ultra elite track only playtoys, probably would) have built this actual car very much like they have independent of whether the VGT program actually existed or not. Since McLaren already styled it and determined that there was a market for such a car just like there has been for the other similar cars we already can guess that the design would have been the very similar, so all PD did was give a little advertising boost that McLaren didn't have to pay for themselves.


Read, then respond. You're not posting in the GT7 subforum where posting a gotcha that's vaguely praising PD in lieu of an actual post is enough to make you king 🤬 for the day.



Multiple in the beginning of this thread claimed that it had done so. Most of the responses in the thread before you posted were in response to those posts.


Read, then respond.



Provide an example, then. We've got this non-street legal track toy as one, assuming McLaren wouldn't have built it basically the same regardless. We've got a bunch of stuff that's just as crazy and imaginary and meaningless as the Nike was in GT4, so not those. We've got a few where the manufacturer took a car design that already existed and added a wild body kit and vents and spoilers and crazy LED lights and more extreme proportions to it, so not those. And we've got the Chiron, whose design would have already been completed well before that point so adding a big spoiler to it for the VGT program was just an innovative way to preview a car they were already going to make, so not that.



I'd personally suggest that PD could stop wasting their resources doing advertising campaigns for other companies who were already going to build non-functioning fantasy design studies that get pushed around everywhere at car shows before being forgotten in a few years just like they have for at least 50 years now.

Well tbh with that logic isn't every every brand new car in Gran Turismo an "advertisement"? We get to drive these VGTs, I think you seem to forget that these cars aren't just advertising, they are content in the game aswell.

 

[Imari]

...but you should also expect others to call you out because of your ungratefulness towards something that doesn’t cost you anything...

One, I don't know if you're aware but the game costs money. The VGT program has been part of the game since GT6. Any costs associated with it are factored into development. It's not a freebie.

Two, I should expect to be called out if I'm not grateful for whatever Polyphony chooses to give me?

That sort of uncritical consumerism seems like it would really play into the sort of mindless dreck that companies like ActiBlizz and EA pump out these days. After all, if your customers will be grateful no matter what you give them, why bother making it good?

You can do what you like, but I like to think about the purchases I make and what parts of them I think were well done or otherwise. Sometimes, I write about those thoughts on the internets. I know that seems unreasonable and selfish to you that I would just voice my actual true opinion in mild but direct language, but it's just something that I do. I'm weird like that.

So i will say it this time directly: show at least some respect for the Love and passion Kaz and PD put into these things, trying to go a step further as others (what they always did), even if you don’t like the result.

And if I don't, then what? Are you going to continue to harrass me? Is that the deal? Because it sure sounds like you're making a threat here.

I'll show respect for the things that I think deserve respect, thanks. I'm not taking marching orders from you as to what I should and shouldn't respect.

Gran Turismo has a lot of great things about it, but I don't believe the VGT program is one of them and I'm not going to pretend that I do.

And no savior or lord bs, don’t just exaggerate things to make a point.
Just don’t take things for granted and first respect the architect instead of behaving like ungrateful infants.

Let me ask you: is it so hard to understand that it’s not about the criticism, but about the way it gets voiced, about the attitude that gets cultivated because „we are just on the internet“?

You're going to bat against the way the criticism of the VGT program is being voiced and in the same post calling people "ungrateful infants"?

Dude. A little self-awareness. You're the one being aggressive and borderline abusive here.

Yeah valid point, at first, but the main thing is that you guys behave questionable in the first place, it’s just that the person this is about isnt present.

It's not about a person. It's not even really about the group of people that make up the developers of the game. It's about the VGT program. That can be discussed largely independently of the people who make the program.

You keep trying to make criticism of the VGT program out as if it's some sort of personal attack, but it just isn't and never was. No creator is 100% solid gold hits, and that's an unreasonable expectation to have. Everyone has some stuff that just isn't that great, and that before we get into the idea that different people will have differing opinions on the quality of a creation.

Criticism of some parts of their work is not an automatic slight against everything they've ever done. You're reading a bunch of stuff into this that simply isn't there.

 

[Tornado]

Still waiting for just that single additional example of a car from the VGT program that shows how super influential it definitely is from the person who is definitely not mad that all the childish ungrateful infants behaving questionably are spouting BS about the program full of cars that definitely all had extensive internal development by the manufacturers in question before being handed to PD to make.

 

[Samus]

Well tbh with that logic isn't every every brand new car in Gran Turismo an "advertisement"?

Yes. The difference is they're advertising a real car that many people in the real world find desirable, they might even own them in the real world.

 

[VinylRichie]

Still waiting for just that single additional example of a car from the VGT program that shows how super influential it definitely is from the person who is definitely not mad that all the childish ungrateful infants behaving questionably are spouting BS about the program full of cars that definitely all had extensive internal development by the manufacturers in question before being handed to PD to make.

When or where did I say that there is one? You can sure wait a long time.

And thanks, this post shows exactly that you haven’t understood anything👍

What is questionable? Nobody is personally insulting Kaz, we're discussing the project.

I never said one of you insulted Kaz, why do you think that?

What is questionable? Just to make you aware, these complaints and posts are under the news that some manufacturer builds a car influenced by one from the same manufacturer that is in the game we are playing.
People complain because of this.
There could be two things, McLaren builds this car like they do right now, or they wouldn’t have decided to build it and all of this would never happen.
So why is it such a great reason to complain that it does happen?
And I’m not talking from a ecologist perspective, or as a critic of our form of capitalism, just as a gamer.

 

[Imari]

What is questionable? Just to make you aware, these complaints and posts are under the news that some manufacturer builds a car influenced by one from the same manufacturer that is in the game we are playing.
People complain because of this.
There could be two things, McLaren builds this car like they do right now, or they wouldn’t have decided to build it and all of this would never happen.
So why is it such a great reason to complain that it does happen?
And I’m not talking from a ecologist perspective, or as a critic of our form of capitalism, just as a gamer.

And so you think it's important that someone like you steps in and tells everyone just how silly they're being for discussing the VGT program following an article about the VGT program?

Unless, you know, they wanted to say nice things about it. That's okay. But no being mean or ungrateful or disrespectful. Or even like, mildly critical. Absolutely nothing that could be interpreted negatively in any way.

Strong reasoning. Hard to argue with that one, what with there being absolutely no substance to it at all beyond "shut UP you guys".

 

[Tornado]

When or where did I say that there is one? You can sure wait a long time.

And if the influence it has on real-life cars doesn't fit your individual expectations, then yeah, too bad. It influences real-life cars, that is way more than any game ever did.

It's been a while since I've seen someone so bad at this that they confuse themselves.

And thanks, this post shows exactly that you haven’t understood anything👍

This really hurts coming from the industry expert who is so juiced in about how all this stuff works that he noted that the cars in the VGT program all had extensive development work put into them by the manufacturers before they were given to PD and PD did very little in comparison in bringing them "to life."





Presumably even the one where the manufacturer themselves admitted that they basically hadn't put any thought into how someone would even sit in it until years later when they had to do so.

Just to make you aware, these complaints and posts are under the news that some manufacturer builds a car influenced by one from the same manufacturer that is in the game we are playing.

I think you'd find, if you went back to the first page of the thread again, that most of the discussion was actually about how much or little the Vision GT program has influenced manufacturers taking part in for the actual cars they make and their role versus traditional concept cars; as opposed to a thread talking about the program itself or the GT games or PD's opportunity cost for working on it. Which makes sense, since this is a thread in the automotive subforum and not a thread in the Gran Turismo forum and thus is populated by many people who couldn't give two 🤬 about the Gran Turismo games themselves. It wasn't until you cluelessly barreled into the thread to throw a fit that people aren't salivating at every scrap of content PD gives them and that everyone who disagrees with you is infantile/ungrateful/spouting BS/etc even though this thread isn't about PD or Gran Turismo directly that the discussion shifted towards specifically talking about the merits or lack thereof of the program itself as it pertains to the games. So, mission accomplished for directly driving discussion towards something you clearly don't want people to talk about for far longer than the thread probably originally had legs for.





But this has already been pointed out to you once, so I suspect this is just something else you aren't capable of coming to terms with before responding as if the people you're talking to are morons.

 

[Samus]

So not that we needed it, but here is confirmation that the original design for the car was sketched in 2011.



"Then in 2017 Sony came to us and said 'have you got a car for our famous Gran Turismo', and Rob thought that this car would be ideal for that"

The VGT program itself is not influencing anything. It's just somewhere for manufacturers to place their stuff.

 

[Tornado]

So exactly like the Chiron then.

 

[Famine]

"Then in 2017 Sony came to us and said 'have you got a car for our famous Gran Turismo', and Rob thought that this car would be ideal for that"

Not to call the entire timeline of this story told to an influencer to "sell" him on the car (which he'd already bought a year ago) for a YT video into doubt, but... I'm not buying it.


Rob Melville wasn't design director at McLaren until 2017, although he had been on the design team at the start of McLaren Automotive in 2010. Frank Stephenson designed the MP4-12C, 650S, P1, and 720S (Melville has a design credit on the P1 and 720S), with Melville's first "solo" design being the 570S in 2015.

While Melville may have sketched a basic form for the UVGT/Solus (and it's only superficially similar - no wheel pods, no rear wing, no fin, side bodywork is continuous down the vehicle length... and so on), it didn't become a full 3D model until Alex Alexiev made it one, and he joined McLaren in 2014 - primarily on MSO projects (and credited with interior design on the 720S).

The McLaren Ultimate VGT was then unveiled in September 2017. That means that if the story of Sony approaching McLaren in 2017 saying "have you got a car for our famous Gran Turismo" is true, it took a maximum of nine months to get the whole thing done. Other manufacturers have stated periods well in excess of this (Porsche's VGT took two and a half years, and they basically build aborted concept cars for fun), although I can imagine it would greatly depend on whether the car was designed for the game from scratch or already set to go.


Stripped of the marketing context of it, it seems... more likely that Sony (actually Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo Explore studio) approached McLaren in early 2016 and said "have you got a car for our famous Gran Turismo".

At which point Frank Stephenson would have said something like "lol, I'm tapping out soon anyway, give it to Rob", Rob said something like "I've got this sketch from, like, 2014, get Alex to make a 3D model for it", Alex made a 3D model of it, and the Ultimate (a name retconned by McLaren onto the P1 and F1 when it came up with the idea of Ultimate, Super, and Sport Series in 2016) became a thing for the first time, landing in Gran Turismo a sprightly 15 months+ later.

Then someone said "Hahahaha, we can totally make that; let's give it a normal driving position and stick in this container of Judd V10s we were going to use for the Senna LMH, and sell it to a handful of car collecting influencers for like £3m a time".


That would still mean it's just somewhere for manufacturers to place their stuff, but it would also mean that this stuff wouldn't have even become stuff until Gran Turismo asked for it - and wouldn't have become Solus without being a VGT first.

 

[VinylRichie]

It's been a while since I've seen someone so bad at this that they confuse themselves.



This really hurts coming from the industry expert who is so juiced in about how all this stuff works that he noted that the cars in the VGT program all had extensive development work put into them by the manufacturers before they were given to PD and PD did very little in comparison in bringing them "to life."





Presumably even the one where the manufacturer themselves admitted that they basically hadn't put any thought into how someone would even sit in it until years later when they had to do so.



I think you'd find, if you went back to the first page of the thread again, that most of the discussion was actually about how much or little the Vision GT program has influenced manufacturers taking part in for the actual cars they make and their role versus traditional concept cars; as opposed to a thread talking about the program itself or the GT games or PD's opportunity cost for working on it. Which makes sense, since this is a thread in the automotive subforum and not a thread in the Gran Turismo forum and thus is populated by many people who couldn't give two 🤬 about the Gran Turismo games themselves. It wasn't until you cluelessly barreled into the thread to throw a fit that people aren't salivating at every scrap of content PD gives them and that everyone who disagrees with you is infantile/ungrateful/spouting BS/etc even though this thread isn't about PD or Gran Turismo directly that the discussion shifted towards specifically talking about the merits or lack thereof of the program itself as it pertains to the games. So, mission accomplished for directly driving discussion towards something you clearly don't want people to talk about for far longer than the thread probably originally had legs for.





But this has already been pointed out to you once, so I suspect this is just something else you aren't capable of coming to terms with before responding as if the people you're talking to are morons.

Sorry but what is this, really? I really shouldn’t respond to this but here we go. You said you are waiting for me to give you an additional example of a influential car from the VGT series. I never made an announcement to name another one or said that there’s more to it, and I never said it’s „super influential“, it has in some cases some influence, and in some real world cars influenced VGTs, that’s it.
You must be interpreting things into my comments, and that’s probably because of the binary-interpretational way of thinking: if someone doesn’t support my point, he must be on the total opposite..
No I’m not super supportive of everything that comes to the VGT program, but that’s also totally irrelevant, because it’s not about this and I won’t repeat myself again here cuz your clearly ain’t willing to step out of your position for one second and try a different view on yourself. I’m totally aware of what I’m doing here, thanks, but you ain’t able to discuss anything it seems because of that thing you call an attitude.

I think you‘d find, if you go back in the thread, that I answered originally on a post that was complaining that „just“ cars for the elite, track-day cars for the super rich result out of the VGT program and no cars for the mortal ones. This and more was what I was responding to, what got this whole thing going, so what the f are you talking about?

And no, not everyone who disagrees with me I would call an infant or ungrateful or whatever, just some who actually act like that, but if you feel better with this picture of me go with it.

Tell me, what do you know about car development? The guy (not sure anymore if it was you or someone else) suggested that some VGTs take less than 8 hours to create. I highly doubt that and on what does this statement even stand?

 

[McLaren]

The VGT discussion has been amusing to read.


I think a large chunk of the reason this was finally built was because the track-only hypercar market still has life in it & McLaren knows it can throw its history of racing behind it to move the units. Otherwise, it doesn't have much more purpose than to make quick dollars for the company & at 25 cars, the production is probably just low enough to get what they're after because some of McLaren's limited-edition cars have struggled a bit. Elva production was cut back significantly & altered to move more US units, 13 of the original 16 US-only Sabres found owners & 3 of those cars were resold in the first year. Maybe this will do much better w/ a global market, but I get the notion the US McLaren market isn't after this sort of car.

Of course Manny got one, though. Man has like, 7-8 SLRs and is personally making MSO money sending at least 2 through their restoration program.

 

[ProjectWHaT]

Top Gear magazine goes behind the scenes with McLaren testing the Solus GT for the first time on track



They revealed the Solus GT did not have a name at the time of filming 6 weeks before the reveal and was codenamed the P94 internally. It seems they did not use the name BC-03, which was the name given to buyers 4 years ago. But interestingly, you can see it on the "halo" in the interior it says BC-08.

The engine "is not an Audi engine". Instead it is a "bespoke modified engine made for this car, specifically". It's an "LMP derived engine". I think someone mentioned it was a Judd engine in the thread, so it's most likely a modified version of this

JUDD GV 5.0 & 5.5L V10 | Le Mans Engine | Judd Power

The Judd GV 5.0 and 5.5L V10 is eligible for private teams to race in the LMP1 Le Mans category and also ideal for Historic Sportscar Racing.

juddpower.com

 

[Famine]

It seems they did not use the name BC-03, which was the name given to buyers 4 years ago.

That was the US-only McLaren Sabre, revealed in 2020.

Although thinking about it, if it was US-only it should have been the "Saber".

 

[ProjectWHaT]

That was the US-only McLaren Sabre, revealed in 2020.

Although thinking about it, if it was US-only it should have been the "Saber".

Ah, I see, that makes more sense. I wonder what sort of extreme/one-off cars they've made between 03 and 08

 

[Keef]

Apparently the Triple F family has already been fitted for a Solus.

 

[VICIOUS13JP]

It's not Vision GT, Forza can get this?

 

[Famine]

This is the discussion thread for an article on GTPlanet:

McLaren’s Vision GT-Inspired Solus Wins Goodwood Festival of Speed Shootout​

Less than a year after McLaren revealed its existence to the world, the McLaren Solus GT — a car that owes much of its origins to a virtual concept car for Gran Turismo Sport — has beaten all-comers to win the famous Goodwood Festival of Speed Timed Shootout...

 

[QTheRacer_31]

I love VGTs 🥰

 

[danimac]

I’d love for this version to come to the game. If we can get multiple versions of a Skyline I’m sure this wouldn’t bother anyone. 😁

 

[brockie]

Would love the hill climb to come to the game with some sort of competition, remember a few GTs ago smashing the red bull through it