A new video posted on the official Gran Turismo social media channels has shown more of legendary designer Giorgetto Giugiaro’s recent tour of Polyphony Digital‘s offices — and revealed a new car that’s in the works for the game.
Giorgetto Giugiaro and his son Fabrizio visited PD in mid-April, probably combining it with a visit to the Automobile Council event in nearby Chiba, with previously published photographs of the tour showing plenty of fun interaction but little by way of tidbits for Gran Turismo fans ravenous for information.
The video of the tour posted to social media shows more of the same but, in one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment right at the 34-second mark, there’s also a brief shot of an office monitor in which Kazunori Yamauchi is explaining some details that clearly shows a relatively complete model of the classic FIAT Panda:
While not quite the sharp and pointy supercar you might associate with Giugiaro — and the ItalDesign firm he founded — the FIAT Panda is a car with some history in Gran Turismo. It was first introduced in GT4 as a 1990 model and persisted through to Gran Turismo 6 (like much of GT4’s car list) as a Standard/Simple car.
A staple of European roads from 1980 through to its retirement in 2003, the Panda was almost unchanged across its entire 23-year run, though there were some significant mechanical changes in the mid-80s and a later facelift.
The car in the image looks to be similar to the one previously featured, coming at roughly the mid-point of its life and not bearing the later fascia, and a standard model rather than the legendary 4×4. It also seems pretty complete, with a full body model, mechanical components, and the interior in place.
Glimpsing a vehicle in development like this is rare, but the last time it happened was with the Jaguar XJ220 in a presentation at PD’s offices, and that arrived four months after we first saw it. There was also the Ruf CTR3, seen in a Sony Bravia TV ad in July 2019 before hitting GT Sport that November.
That could hint that we’ll see the Panda some time this summer, so Panda fans should keep an eye on this space for all the latest!
