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 the Nissan GT-R Proto '05, the Toyota FT-86II concept '11, and all closed-cockpit Vision Gran Turismo cars were classified as Simple instead. The availability of a 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, 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 cars that made their debut in the game (e.g. the Peugeot 307 CC Premium AVN '04 and the Chevrolet Camaro SS '10), while some others are returning cars from previous games which have been upgraded to a Premium status (e.g. the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IV GSR '96, debuting in the original Gran Turismo; and the 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, all 337 cars in Gran Turismo Sport, and all 514 cars (as of v1.50) in Gran Turismo 7.
"Super Premium"[]
All cars in Gran Turismo Sport and Gran Turismo 7 are all Premiums, albeit at a much more detailed quality (such as improved textures and colors) to accommodate the more advanced graphics engine of the PS4 and PS5; this is often referred to as "Super Premium" cars. However there are some cars that lacked cockpit views (such as the Toyota S-FR Racing Concept '16 and most Vision Gran Turismo cars), and thus, are not available for use in the VR modes of both games.
In Sport, 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, and Toyota (both the original - recycling the interior from the original FT-1 and the Gr.3 variant with an original model) now have fully-modeled interiors. Succeeding Vision Gran Turismo cars are also fully modeled with interiors, except for the Zagato and Italdesign cars.
All cars in Gran Turismo 7 retained the same Premium quality as in Sport, but with the added benefits of the PlayStation 5's graphical technology such as ray-tracing that allows for a realistic lighting form and reflections.
Features[]
Features of a Premium/Detailed car include:
- Fully detailed interior recreations
- Physics damage (affecting car performance)
- Scratches, dents, and dirt accumulation (minor damage)
- Deformation and separation of body panels (body panels only fully separate on the 2008 WRC cars in GT5)
- More detailed customization options in GT Auto (except in GT Sport)
- Headlights having high/low beams
- Reverse lights
- Windshield wipers
- Non-body color carbon fiber hoods installable from GT Auto (in GT5 and GT6)
- Adaptive tessellation (on select GT6 cars)
- Gallery View available (only in GT6)
- Paintable brake calipers (in GT6, road cars with racing brakes only)
For "Super Premium" cars in GT Sport and GT7, the following functionalities 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)
- Tire flex depending on the rotations of the tires
- Turn indicators
- Wide body kits (GT7 only, on most road cars)
- Addition of roll cages (GT7 only, on select road cars)
- Customizable Brembo brake calipers (GT7 only, on 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 mostly 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-game are modeled using Autodesk Maya, before being implemented in the game's engine.
- It is 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 being the Jaguar XJR-9 '88 and the Subaru IMPREZA 22B-STi '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 the Suzuki V6 ESCUDO Pikes Peak Special '98.
- 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 being the Jaguar XJR-9 '88 and the Subaru IMPREZA 22B-STi '98.
- When building cars for the game, common methods include relying on CAD (computer-assisted drawing) data 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 modeling a fully-completed Vision Gran Turismo car is currently unknown, likely that manufacturers sent 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.
- For GT Sport, it is highly likely that the Premium vehicles from past PS3-era games 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 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 one car in GT7 consists of roughly 500,000 polygons.
- Several "super Premium" vehicles, such as the Honda S660 '15, the Toyota Tundra TRD Pro '19 and the 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 993 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 a 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.