It’s the season of plenty in the world of Gran Turismo Sport. We’ve seen not one but two car-carrying updates in March, and yesterday the official site leaked yet more like the Toyota AE86 Trueno and Porsche 962. Now comes word of another classic Italian, though it’s an unlikely one: the Lamborghini Espada.
This particular example of Lamborghini’s four-seat grand tourer is owned by Aaron Robinson of Hagerty. Robinson had previously spent a week at Polyphony back in 2006 watching the team work on the infamously long production period of GT5. Fast forward to modern times and his guide during that previous visit, Taku Imasaki — a long-standing Sony employee with close ties to Polyphony asked Robinson if the team could use his personal car to scan for inclusion into GT Sport.
Naturally, Robinson said yes. And thus, we get to see a glimpse of the secretive process that results in GT Sport’s “super premium” models.
In his article on the scanning effort, Robinson states Imasaki prefers “to work with a friend.” We’ve heard similar comments before at live events, and it’s lead to cars like Dai Yoshihara’s drifting BRZ. In this case, it’s Robinson’s delightfully non-concours Espada. With a layer of patina from actual use and a twisted front bumper, it has a sort of life to it that museum pieces simply don’t. We’ll be curious to see if that all translates to the game.
The Espada tends to fade into the background behind cars like the Miura and Countach. But the four-seater grand tourer was, at one point in time, the company’s best-selling model. It took the Countach’s be-winged second wind in the ’80s to topple the graceful GT.
Whenever the Espada does arrive in GT Sport, it’d mark the first time the model has ever shown up in a console title. That happened earlier this year with another rare Raging Bull, as the Lamborghini Jarama showed up in Forza Horizon 4.
Oh yeah, and we would like to see the “little homemade remote-control camera tank”. Maybe that can come in a future update too, eh Polyphony?
See more articles on GT Sport Car List and Lamborghini.
