The latest flurry of information from Polyphony Digital accompanying the special State of Play video for Gran Turismo 7 has answered a lot of questions, but it’s raised one pretty big one at the same time: are engine swaps coming to the series?
It’s a question that comes from one very brief moment during the State of Play broadcast that you could easily have missed.
During the sequence talking about vehicle tuning and car customization, around 37 minutes in, we’re taken through the fact that there’s almost 60 different types of performance part for each of the 400 vehicles in the game. The video clip then switches to the tuning menu, where we can see various bits being added to a 1966 Volkswagen 1200.
However, if you glance at the left side of the screen, you’ll see that this is no ordinary Beetle. It boasts a 3.8-liter engine rated at 455hp and 315lbft. In addition, there’s a section of the page specifically for the “Engine Model”, which it states is the M96/76-Porsche-’01.
In case you’re not fully conversant in engine codes, the M96.76 is the Mezger engine from the 2001 Porsche 911 996.1 GT3. That’s a flat-six derived from the engine found in the Porsche 962 and Porsche 911 GT1 racing cars, although it was only ever available as a 3.6-liter unit in the GT3.
All that combined means that this Beetle has had its engine swapped — and then bored out — within Gran Turismo 7 itself. That’s a pretty firm hint that engine swaps are something that will come to GT7; the fact that an engine model section is even present in the car menu suggests it’s far more widespread than just the Volkswagen Group too.
Of course engine swaps are a staple of car culture, and it’s hardly uncommon to come across cars with truly wacky swaps — a V8 in a Tesla EV, a Hellcat in a Prius, a 2JZ in an A90 Supra — and Gran Turismo does like to reach out across the wide world of car culture. Nonetheless, it’s something we’ve not seen before in a GT game, and it even passed without mention in the State of Play clip.
More information on this should be forthcoming, so stay tuned to GTPlanet for all the latest!
