- Not to be confused with the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance Gran Turismo Trophy or the Tokyo Auto Salon Gran Turismo Awards.
The Gran Turismo Awards logo.
The Gran Turismo Awards is a set of awards given by Gran Turismo to the best tuned cars.
The award was originally given to cars on display at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas between 2003 to 2018 and was formally known as SEMA Gran Turismo Awards for this reason. Each recipient has been rewarded with having their vehicle added to the game in a future release.
The award was initially discontinued after the 2018 edition, likely due to Yamauchi's commitments with organizing the Gran Turismo World Series. The award returned in 2025, but at the venue of 2025 Gran Turismo World Series Round 3 rather than the SEMA Show.[1]
In Gran Turismo Sport, GT Awards winners are coded so that the manufacturer is "GT Awards (SEMA)", rather than their individual tuners, and are sold from the Gran Turismo dealer. This behavior was reverted in Gran Turismo 7, in which tuners are now recognized as individual manufacturers once more.
Café Description (GT7)[]
This is a collection of awesome cars that have won the "SEMA Gran Turismo Award" that celebrates cool, high-performance cars. If you're wondering what SEMA is, it stands for Specialty Equipment Market Association, a group established in 1963 to bring together businesses involved in manufacturing and marketing of high-performance automotive parts. And, they put on the famous SEMA Show, an automotive aftermarket trade show held in Las Vegas every year on the first week of November.
The SEMA GT Award was a title presented by Gran Turismo that was part of a sponsorship deal that began in 2003.[2] In the U.S., there has been a deep-rooted culture for customization and performance tuning of cars for a long time. American car enthusiasts improved the performance and style of their cars, beginning with hot rods in the 1930s. The SEMA GT Award pays homage to the shining jewels of this custom car culture. It provides the fans around the world to experience these cars through Gran Turismo.
This Mach Forty was the recipient of the GT Award in 2012, produced by Eckert's Rod and Custom of Oregon. At first glance,[3] it looks like a 1969 Ford Mustang... but on the inside, it's a monster machine with a mid-mounted Ford GT V-8 engine! The SEMA GT Award has been given not only to American hot rods, but to European- and Japanese-tuned cars as well.
The Fugu Z is based on the Nissan 240Z is a winner from 2015, and its owner Sung Kang is an actor from the "Fast and the Furious" movies. The Rocket Bunny body kit is especially menacing, and the car comes powered by a naturally aspirated version of the famed RB26 Skyline GT-R engine.
More than a few winners of the SEMA GT Awards began life as unassuming road cars, but then transformed into tarmac-eating monster machines. The 2018 winner by the Greening Auto Company took a relatively compact Maverick and turned it into a hot rod. It was packed with a fully tuned 427 cu-in. V-8, which resulted in a 200-mph top speed (approximately 322 km/h)! it's all about seeing how far you can take your dreams with your car, and the SEMA GT Award is a perpetual embodiment of that endeavor.
Winners[]
| Year | Car | Games | Picture |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | Buick Special | GT4–GT6 | 
|
| 2004 | HPA Motorsports Stage II R32 | GT4–GT6 | 
|
| 2005 | AEM S2000 | GT5–GT6 | 
|
| 2006 | Art Morrison Corvette'60 | GT5P–GT6 | 
|
| 2007 | 2007 HPA Motorsports FT565 twin turbo Audi TT | GT5–GT6 | 
|
| 2008 | High End Performance G37 | GT5–GT6 | 
|
| 2009 | Grand Touring Garage 1970 Ford Mustang Trans-Cammer | GT5–GT6 | 
|
| 2010 | Stielow Engineering Red Devil | GT6 | 
|
| 2011 | Pozzi MotorSports Camaro RS | GT6 | 
|
| 2012 | Eckert's Rod & Custom Mach Forty | GT Sport–GT7 | 
|
| 2013 | Chris Holstrom Concepts 1967 Chevy Nova | GT Sport–GT7 | 
|
| 2014 | Roadster Shop Rampage | GT7 | 
|
| 2015 | GReddy Fugu Z | GT Sport–GT7 | 
|
| 2016 | Wicked Fabrication GT 51 | GT7 | 
|
| 2017 | Garage RCR Civic | GT7 | 
|
| 2018 | Greening Auto Company Maverick | GT7 | 
|
| 2025 | Big Mike's 1992 Honda Prelude | TBD | 
|
Trivia[]
- As of 2025, 5 out of 17 SEMA Gran Turismo Award winners were based on the cars from the 1960s, tied with 5 out of 17 winners also based on the cars from the 1970s.
- Despite it never winning the SEMA Gran Turismo Awards, the 1932 Ford Roadster appears in the explanatory text relating to the related GT Café extra book (No. 22, added in GT7 version 1.34). Although it is possible it appears there to allow the explanation of the hot rod tuning culture, as the Ford Roadster is a byproduct of that.
- It also appears at the end of the explanatory text with the GT Awards cars included with GT7 as of version 1.34, where the extra book was added.
- In GT5, one of the title screen scenes display all Premium SEMA winners being featured, alongside the RE Amemiya FD3S RX-7, that never won the SEMA Gran Turismo Awards.
- HPA Motorsports is the only organization to win the SEMA GT Awards more than once, in 2004 and 2007.
- HPA is also the only organization to win the SEMA GT Awards with a European base car.
- Chevrolet-based vehicles won the most awards with five (2006, 2010, 2011, 2013, and 2014), with Ford behind at four (2009, 2012, 2016, and 2018). Honda (2005, 2017, and 2025) is the only other base manufacturer to win the award more than once, unless Infiniti (2008) and Nissan (2015) are counted together.
- All GT Awards winners are treated as American cars (Canadian in the case of HPA cars in PlayStation 3-era games). This resulted in GT Awards winners not based on an American car being eligible to compete in events restricted to American cars (except for the HPA cars in PS3-era games), instead of Japanese or European events, depending on the base car's country of origin.
- Although the blue-and-red Gran Turismo logo was definitely phased out by the release of GT6, that variant of the logo is still used for GT Awards.
- The 2025 edition of the Gran Turismo Awards, after a seven-year hiatus, is the first running of the award without any involvement with SEMA.
Gallery[]
Notes[]
- ↑ The first-ever Gran Turismo World Series Fan Fest comes to Los Angeles – PlayStation.Blog
- ↑ This sponsorship deal ended after 2018, after which it was placed on hiatus until 2025.
- ↑ Comma was misplaced in "first" in the original text
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