Premium is a classification of cars from Gran Turismo 5 to denote the level to which it has been designed, and how damage will be processed. In Gran Turismo 6, Premium cars with interior views are listed as Detailed; Premium cars lacking interiors such as Nissan GT-R Proto '05, Toyota FT-86II concept '11 and all closed-cockpit Vision Gran Turismo cars are classified as Simple instead. The availability of Gallery View thus determines if the car is Premium or Standard in GT6, regardless of the interior status.
The key characteristic of a Premium car is that it can be bought in the New Car Dealership like in real life, and is therefore always available for purchase. In contrast, Standard Cars are rarer because the player must wait for them to appear, although this restriction was removed in GT6.
Most of these Premium Cars are the cars that made their debut in the game (e.g. the Peugeot 307 CC Premium AVN '04 and Chevrolet Camaro SS '10), while some others are returning cars from the previous games which have been upgraded to Premium status (e.g. the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IV GSR '96, debuting in the original Gran Turismo; and Shelby Cobra 427 '66, debuting in Gran Turismo 2).
There are 243 Premium cars in Gran Turismo 5, 474 Premium cars in Gran Turismo 6, 337 in Gran Turismo Sport (all cars) and 454 in Gran Turismo 7 (all cars as well).
"Super Premium"[]
All cars in the later titles, such as in Gran Turismo Sport, are all Premium vehicles, albeit at a much more detailed quality (such as improved textures and colors) to accommodate the more advanced graphics engine of the PS4; this is often referred as "super Premium" cars. However there are some cars that lack cockpit views (such as the Toyota S-FR Racing Concept '16 and Vision Gran Turismo cars from Aston Martin, BMW, Infiniti, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz (original, Racing Series and LH Edition), Mini, Mitsubishi, Peugeot (original and Gr.3 variant), Subaru, Volkswagen (GTI Supersport only) and Zagato), and thus, are not available for use in the VR Tour mode in Arcade Mode.
Another is that when selected in the Arcade Modes (when owned in the Garage), the left side of the screen shows off different angles of the car as they do not have an interior (typically, on a car with a modeled interior on the transmission select screen, angles of the interior are shown).
Vision Gran Turismo cars from Mazda, Nissan, SRT (all versions) and Toyota (both the original - recycling the interior from the original FT-1 and the Gr.3 variant with an original) now have fully-modeled interiors. Succeeding Vision Gran Turismo cars such as the Bugatti, Hyundai, Fittipaldi Motorsports, McLaren, Honda, Daihatsu, Audi (albeit fictitious) and Jaguar are also fully modeled with interiors.
It is highly likely that all cars in Gran Turismo 7 will retain the same Premium quality as in Gran Turismo Sport, but with the added benefits of the PlayStation 5's graphical technology such as ray-tracing which allow for realistic lighting and reflection.
Features[]
Features of a Premium/Detailed car include:
- Full interior recreation
- Physics damage (affects car performance)
- Scratches, dents, dirt accumulation (minor damage)
- Deformation and separation of body panels (serious damage; body panels only fully separate on 2008 WRC cars in GT5)
- Vehicular roll over
- More detailed customization in GT Auto (except in GT Sport)
- Headlights: high/low beams
- Reverse lights
- Windshield wipers
- Non-body color carbon fiber hoods installable from GT Auto
- Adaptive tessellation (on select GT6 cars)
- Gallery View available (in GT6)
- Paintable brake calipers (in GT6, road cars with racing brakes only)
For "super Premium" cars in GT Sport and GT7, the following functionality are also available:
- VR Tour functionality (only available to cars with fully modeled interiors)
- Livery Editor functionality (except for the Mercedes-AMG F1 W08 EQ Power+ 2017 and its Color Variation variant, likely due to licensing. Functionality is improved in GT7.)
- Tire flex depending on rotation of the tires
- Turn indicators
- Wide body kits (GT7 only, on selected road cars)
- Addition of roll cages (GT7 only, on selected road cars)
- Customizable Brembo brake calipers (GT7 only, on selected road cars with Racing or Ceramic Brake System installed)
Trivia[]
- It is said that building and modeling a single Premium vehicle from scratch would take six months, modeled in-house, whether it would be during game development or post-launch as DLC.
- In theory, if Polyphony has at least 50 staff on their car modeling team, then 100 cars, at most, can potentially be completed over the span of one year, if done all by themselves.
- It would take the modeling team 80 hours to accurately model a single headlight.
- As of GT7, the time it takes to build a single vehicle from scratch, in-house by an individual modeling artist, has now increased to 270 days (nine months) on average.
- Cars in the game are modeled using Autodesk Maya, before being implemented in the game's engine.
- It is also said that fictional racing counterparts of certain cars, especially those from GT Sport, could take up to a year to build for the game.
- Furthermore, it is also said that converting a Standard vehicle into Premium will require having to rebuild the car from scratch as opposed to further working on the PS2 assets. Examples of such cars are the Jaguar XJR-9 '88 and Subaru IMPREZA Premium Sport Coupe 22B-STi Version '98.
- As a result, some Standard vehicles that were converted to Premium might have noticeable changes compared to their PS2 counterparts, examples include the Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 Evolution 2 '86 and Suzuki V6 ESCUDO Pikes Peak Special '98.
- When building cars for the game, common methods include relying on CAD (Computer-assisted drawings) directly from manufacturers, or sourcing physical cars, such as by laser-scanning them, or relying on photography across different angles (consisting of up to hundreds, if not, thousands of photos) for reference.
- The process for getting a fully-completed Vision Gran Turismo car to be featured in the games are currently unknown, likely that manufacturers send the finalized CAD and that Polyphony will have to work on these models. Certain Vision Gran Turismo cars in GT6 formerly had no interiors; it is possible the same process was done to implement their interiors in GT Sport.
- In GT Sport, it is highly likely that Premium vehicles from past games such as GT5 and GT6 are ported over directly with minor polishing and quality control to accommodate the newer title's graphics engine. This is mostly due to claims of the PS3 premium models being "future-proofed" for future consoles in mind.
- The Ford GT LM Race Car Spec II is the only fictional race car that was once a Standard vehicle to be fully rebuilt into Premium for Gran Turismo 7. The process of how the car was rebuilt is currently unknown, however.
- It is said that a car in GT7 consists of 500,000 polygons.
- Several "super Premium" vehicles in GT Sport, such as the Honda S660 '15, Toyota Tundra TRD Pro '19 and Porsche 911 Carrera RS Club Sport (993) '95 are said to have been outsourced rather than modeled in-house.[1][2] Some may have been completed at a faster time than others (the Tundra and the 911 Carrera RS having been completed in three months as opposed to the usual six).
- As of GT7, Polyphony Digital hired six 3D modeling companies for this purpose.
- Despite Premium vehicles having more detailed damage modeling than Standard vehicles, their damage models are still very limited, except for the four 2008 World Rally Championship cars in GT5.