They say hindsight is 20/20, but what about foresight?
The Nissan Concept 2020 Vision Gran Turismo is the Japanese carmaker’s contribution to the series of Vision Gran Turismo fantasy cars commissioned to celebrate the racing game franchise’s 15th anniversary. It joins concepts from BMW, Mercedes-Benz AMG, and Volkswagen.
While those other cars have been purely about looking cool, Nissan says the Concept 2020 is a potential vision of a future performance car.
Take one look at it, though, and it’s hard to take that claim seriously. The virtual concept looks like the offspring of a GT-R and an F-22 Raptor, sitting impossibly low to the ground with body panels that have been sucked fast to the chassis, and massive air intakes that look like they could swallow pedestrians.
The design definitely looks futuristic, yet the vaguely GT-R-ish elements and prominent grille will remind gamers that this is a Nissan, and not Darth Vader’s daily driver.
So, like the other Vision Gran Turismo cars, the Concept 2020 appears to be a flight of fancy, a design that takes full advantage of the fact that it will only exist in the virtual world of Gran Turismo 6.
Or is there more going on? Nissan notes that the initial concept (designed at the company’s European studio in London) was seen to have so much potential that an engineering team from the Nissan Technical Center in Ashugi, Japan, was brought in to consult.
Nissan is, after all, planning to launch an all-new GT-R soon, and a new LMP1 racer called the GT-R LM NISMO for next year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. Perhaps the Concept 2020 will help designers tie those two projects together.
The company encourages enthusiasts to “watch this space,” but the next GT-R probably won’t be this radical looking. A better bet is to download the Concept 2020 when it becomes available for Gran Turismo 6 next month.
