Party with Kazunori Yamauchi at the 2011 GT Awards

Video from last year’s GT Awards, where Mark Stielow’s ’69 Camaro took the top prize.

The 2011 SEMA show kicks off this week in Las Vegas, and the Gran Turismo Awards – where a custom car from the show is awarded immortality in a Gran Turismo game – are almost here!

The “Best in Show” winner be personally crowned by Kazunori Yamauchi at the GT Awards party, Thursday night at The Cosmopolitan Hotel’s Marquee Nightclub. The event kicks off at 9:00PM and will include a live performance by the Stone Temple Pilots – a band most GT fans know for their song “Sex Type Thing” [iTunes / Amazon MP3], prominently featured in Gran Turismo 2’s soundtrack.

The free event is open to all registered SEMA show attendees, who will have photo opportunities with Kazunori Yamauchi and U.S. GT Academy winner Bryan Heitkotter.

I will be personally on-hand for the event, and would love to meet any GTPlanet readers who may also be in attendance. Send me an email or tweet @GTPlanetNews and I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for you. See you there!

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Comments (84)

  1. It's me

    I’m goin there and I hope the give a chance to let ppl give suggestions…. I would ask him to put in the Ken Block mustang or fiesta.. I’m sure that would dominate the drift tracks

  2. Kenex05

    I personally don’t understand how a reasonably ‘legendary’ car – AE86 is yet a standard
    and I guess small tracks like touges or Gunsai would be awesome too

  3. Oobbergear

    Dude, screw that Sema 86 Corolla, just make the one that’s already in the game premium. They already have most initial d cars premium, why not the Shigeno version? Besides that, just hoping for cars that were suppose to be premium, actually become premium and can’t wait for what they’ll have for the upcoming DLCs.

  4. Daynef

    All of which would be in their own personal stalls. And if PN could handle it, have the car show on a dedicated server with maximum upload/download speeds and make it capable of 100-250 people…

  5. Daynef

    I would like to see cars like the supra rz and srt4 as premium cars. Also a customization option(decals, personal pictures, etc). Then in the future, an online car show/auction. (Sema/Barret Jackson) where players could walk around(same as camera mode)chat, bid, and vote for their favorite car…

    1. Nuschel01

      Yea, but than they should make the Noplates also decalable, so that I can make my own Plates :D Thats the most important for me because I don’t car much about some huge ugly decals all over my beautiful cars

    2. danger23

      I DON’T KNOW Y THEY DON’T MAYBE IT COMING SOON ANYTIME THEY MAKE OLD CLUNKER LIKE THE SILVA PREMIUM CAR, AND THEY DON’T MAKE THE SUPRA A PREMIUM SOMTHINGS WRONG THERE.

  6. CromaTurboIE

    Kazunori possible that he can not make a Ferrari F40 LM and Koenigsseg cssx, Caparo T1, Wiesmann etc etc?

  7. Taunto_Svt

    Mark is a CEO to chevorlet. Just Wat the game needs another American muscle car that can’t take corners ugh. That corolla was pretty sweet. That would be a quick little car and fun to throw around

  8. SpyHunter

    People, the Camaro already won. It was in LAST YEAR’s show. This year’s car has not been decided yet. I just want to know WHEN the car that won LAST year will be in the game.

  9. doodooshorts

    Id like to see the truck make it, looks like it would be fast and drive well for a truck…..plus something different never hurts.

  10. Diatribe777

    We kinda already have a rm camaro…the scirocco looked the best imo, but there’s a couple variants in FM4, oh well, at least he didn’t pick one of the new camaros (as I don’t even drive my edge version)

    1. Diatribe777

      I know they are different, but it’s hard to get excited when we have two good premiums already. Now if PD can display the camaro’s engine bay, then thats a different story!

  11. daspianist

    Im just glad with the new SEMA car will come along a new set of paint chips and car horns. I mean, that’s quality social gaming right there.

  12. TokoTurismo

    I’m so glad I chose Gran Turismo to teach me the way to drive and race. I adore this game. + If Kaz is learning about the american car culture. Does that mean there might be more classic and mondern muscle cars in the future?

    1. HPUnleashed

      Yeah, I wished they’d show how they record the engine sounds for Gran Turismo. I watched a demonstration on Youtube about how Forza does their recording and it was pretty cool. In Forza’s video they mentioned that they have to actually distort the engine noises because most of the time a two speaker stereo can’t pickup the low bass notes.

      If GT doesn’t distort the sound then that would explain why all we hear is the whining treble noise all the time.

    2. HuskyGT

      GT5 DOES have a superior sound in every sense of the word, no matter your speaker system. Problem is that PEOPLE KEEP CONFUSING SOUND QUALITY vs. SOUND SAMPLES. It´s not a bass or treble thing. No matter if you have a 100000 watt 7.1 surround system with maxed out volume, you´ll never make cars like the RM Corvette ZR1/Z06, or the C5R magically sound like a V8, instead of the wierd six cylinder-ish sound that it has with the racing exhaust… This goes for many cars in the game as well.

      Forza has a much lower sound quality when compared to Gran Turismo 5, but at least their cars sound like the engine that they have, plus forza sound is good enough to be enjoyed. Even trash like NFS Shift uses better sound samples, but the sound quality is so poor, broken and artificial that it is a pain to listen to.

      Not saying that GT fails in all cars, but it does in most of them, specially when changing exhausts. I have to admit they have improved though. Even though cars don´t and never will sound like their real counterparts, most cars are sounding like they should now. Most V8 cars sound like V8´s, as well as any other type of engine that didn´t sound correctly before. This can be noticed with the Standards the most, if we compare their GT4 version.

      @ uMadson

      They got the Gallardo right, as well as the Countachs and the Miura. The Murcies are all wrong. They shouldn´t sound like a V10…
      As for the LFA, PD tried, I´ll give them that. The car sounds right before 4k rpm, like if they recorded the real thing up to this point, but then it was just filled in with a terribly artificial sound.

    3. Foxiol

      The best sound in a game (i have a lot of racing games and simulators to prove that) is one mod for GTR2 (and works in rFactor too) called Lamborghini.Murcielago.LP 670-4.SV.Mod.v1.0.GTR2 (the real name) and sounds incredible real. Best sound in a racing game and no doubt of it. And in 2nd place i have Race07 and i downloaded (bought) GT Power Expansion pack for it and comes with the BMW M3 GT2 and sounds incredible too. One of the most closest to real life car sounds also. (comes with the Pagani Zonda R,the Ford GT Matech GT1 and 2 tracks Mid-Ohio and Chayka from the old URSS)

      Back to GT5, the best sounds in game are from the Ford GT, the Pagani Zonda R, Lamborghini Gallardo, Mazda 787B, and many V8 engines but those all sounds great in lower RPM and when you put in N and actually almost every car sounds as it should be only with the started engine.

      It is strange to me that GT series can´t have the real engine sound of the game and other game such as Dirt 3 from Codemasters can have a very good engine sound and despite about the arcade style of the game. Sound is a great part of the game and gives you the full immersion when it is mixed with the handling.

      I love GT series and i can see real engine sounds in the future. Wait for it.

    4. superfluous2

      @HPUnleashed
      That “whining treble sound” could be the straight-cut gears that race cars have (and seems to appear when you add a ‘fully customisable gearbox’ to your car on GT5). Look up some on-board videos on YouTube and all you can hear is the gearbox whining lol!

      Also, cars sound much different when driven on a racetrack than they do when they’re driven on the street. Having taken my car to a few track days, been in Evos, and Hondas out on the track, and driven a Holden V8 race-car, I can say that the sounds in GT5 aren’t all that unrealistic.
      It’s a pity, but race-car engine/exhaust noises aren’t as exciting as we would like to think that they are.
      Some have an annoying drone (RB26DETT), some just sound like a hamster in a blender (rotaries lol), and I think that PD has done a pretty good job of capturing the sounds that different engines make.
      Cheers!

    5. Lord Grey

      superfluous2 has it right, I think. If you’ve ever driven a race car, or ridden in one, you’ll realize that GT5’s sound package isn’t that far off. The transmission in a real road racer drowns out the engine much of the time, and that sound isn’t particularly nice to hear.

    6. HPUnleashed

      I expect to hear whining from a race car. I’ve watched plenty of interior car cams on Youtube and Speed Channel, so I know they have the sounds correct for those. What I’m mainly talking about, and what I don’t understand is why when I buy a stock 1969 Corvette or Shelby Mustang. I get lots of whining noise, and I know a classic muscle car does not sound like that.

  13. nealcropper

    Yea, but how can they release new cars less than a month after releasing Tue game!? AND they will probably be a dlc, u Xbox fanboys are idiots.

    1. TokoTurismo

      But overall I’m still waiting to know why they remove the Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 from being boughten and only sealed as a key in the disk.

  14. madracer

    Only one car?? Probably the winner will be a Japanese car….They could increase the RM versions of the existing cars in the game and bring some fresh machines. Oh and bring on the GT4 circuits and GT4 events!!!!

  15. HKS racer

    Scirocco looks pretty cool, we already have a good Camaro 69 RM, no point to add another dupe.
    And that 86 Corolla, should have good handling.

    1. RACECAR

      The Camaro RM is not even close to being the same thing as the Mark Stielo Camaro. Just because its another Camaro doesn’t automatically make it the same thing.

  16. Johnie12inch

    I wanted it to be the Scirocco, it should have been in the game already! Premium of course, gorgeous car.

    1. Tvensky

      I love all cars! :) they all look like art to me! (exept korean and french cars they are crap I have to admit)

    2. bmoe24x

      Only ones I didnt like where the Corolla and the rally car. Not a fan of those, i think they arent even real cars.

    3. Big Ron

      I am a big tuning fan. But as most tuners completely destroy the character of the original car by adding oversized tuning parts or customizing the shapes to a different result, as it happens with all GT SEMA-cars in GT5, I am not fan of this extreme customizing.

    1. Snaeper

      Replacing a Racing Camaro with a non-racing Camaro?

      Aside from the fact that you can just have both, that makes little sense.

    1. 07_HSV_GTS

      It will be awhile before GT6, I think GTA 6 or 7 will be out by the time a trailer is even announced for GT6. Less than 40 hrs until GTA 5 trailer.

    2. Louie_Schumii

      I like how the Gran Turismo series grows along with it’s fans. Benny Bennassi ft. Gary Go @ Marquee Nightclub haha. Hope coverage of this makes it to GT:TV!

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