At this year’s North American International Auto Show, Polyphony Digital Inc., creators of the newly-released Gran Turismo®6 for PlayStation®3, and Toyota officially announced that the new Toyota FT-1 Concept coupé would be made available to racing fans and gamers exclusively in GT6, where the digital version of the concept was created first to show how the production FT-1 model would look.

Owners of GT6 will be the first to test-drive the FT-1 as a free online update will be made available on 14 January. Once the Update has been installed, a unique Seasonal Event featuring the Toyota FT-1 will be made available in the game. If you achieve a Bronze award or better in the FT-1 challenge at Laguna Seca, you will receive the car for free. Players will also be able to purchase the vehicle from the Toyota dealership without having to complete the Seasonal Event.

“Thanks to the amazing capability of the Gran Turismo game engine, gamers can enjoy a very real simulation piloting the ultra-high-performance FT-1 on the tracks it was designed to master,” said Kevin Hunter, President of Calty Design Research, the group responsible for the FT-1 design.

As part of the pitch process to the top management at Toyota that saw the FT-1 concept selected for construction and display on the international auto show circuit, Calty sought a way to help key executives (including Akio Toyoda) better experience the concept. Calty approached Polyphony about utilising Gran Turismo game physics to help create a driving simulator experience that could physically communicate the performance and emotion of the high-performance coupé concept. For the design selection day, the Polyphony team was able to bring the Calty-designed FT-1 to life in a virtual world and were able to capture the excitement, passion, and performance conveyed by the concept model.

"It’s always been a dream of ours to have our automotive partners use Gran Turismo in exciting new ways," said Kazunori Yamauchi, creator of Gran Turismo and President of Polyphony Digital Inc. “The design team at Calty developed a stunning concept car and we were honoured to work with them to render the car digitally for the concept presentation. The FT-1 is a forward-looking, technically advanced and beautiful concept car. We can’t wait to see fans’ reactions as they drive the vehicle and get to know it the way I was able to.”

This exciting concept represents the future in the carmaker’s design direction. The FT-1 Concept was penned by enthusiast designers at Toyota’s Calty Research Design facility in Newport Beach, California. The vibrant concept represents a Toyota design vision of the ultimate high-performance coupé, and its name is an acronym for Future Toyota (FT), and the number “1” symbolises "ultimate". The unparalleled physics engine in GT6 will bring the FT-1 to life for a gaming community eager to get behind the wheels of this aggressive, track-focused, visionary sportscar concept before it goes into production.

In addition to the creation of the FT-1 in GT6, Toyota is also represented in the groundbreaking Vision Gran Turismo project. A celebration of the franchise’s 15th anniversary, the project invites leading brands to design their vision of the future of driving. The resulting concepts will be released exclusively to GT6 later in the year.