Today (june 14th, 2003) I received an answer from Polyphony. I sent them a mail last month with some questions. I didn't expect it, but they answered. Therefor I will post the questions and answers. I don't know who they came from. The mail was sent from the main adress at Polyphony so I don't know who gave these but they are correct and that's all that matters. I plan to send another mail in 2 months to keep an eye on the development.
How long have you been working on the game?
We've been busy with the development for 3 years now. So we started with develloping GT4 6 months prior to the release of GT3.
What are the main improvements of GT4 when compared with GT3?
It was difficult to improve GT3 but there are some nice improvements.
Graphically there are some changes but not that much. It still looks familiar but there is much improvement in the details, especially on the side of the road. Also, GT3 suffered from pop-up but that's history from now on.
The gameplay has been altered dramatically. The car responds more to exterior factors. It will now respond to the strength of the wind. You'll barely notice this on a regular track, but when you're driving a rally car in the mountains you'll certainly feel it. The weather can also change during a race, so it can suddenly start to rain or snow. Also the tyres have become more important. In GT3 they wore out, but always at the same rate. Tyre damage will depend on : Weight of the car, Downforce, accelleration forces, climate conditions, ground temperature. GT4 also has more cars and tracks than GT3.
How many cars will be in the game?
That's not certain yet. At this moment we have about 550 cars. We have enough licenses to put about 4.000 cars in the game. We'll just keep building cars untill the game is released. One person needs 4 days to build a car from scratch. We have a team to make the cars that includes 10 people. 5 of them are constantly travelling to measure sounds etc. So there's 5 people left so we can build about 5 cars per week (ROXA's note : strange mathematics there). We hope the definitive game will count about 1200 cars. Another change will be that we will not only feature new cars, but all kinds of cars. We have modern cars, oldtimers and also prototypes or cars we won't see for another 2 or 3 years.
How many tracks will be in the game?
We currently have 80 tracks, most of which can be driven the other way around as well. The tracks are almost ready. There are a few more we would like to include but that won't take much more work. A major difference with the previous editions is that we now also have tracks which exist IRL. In GT3 this was only Monte Carlo (ROXA's note : What about LSR?) but now we also have tracks like Monza, Silverstone, etc. Also some tracks from the early GT games are reappearing, like the High Speed Ring. We had lots of emails from people who missed this track in GT3
How about the tuneability of the cars?
Of course it will be possible to tune your cars. There will be a lot more possibilities than in the previous GT's, but I'm not allowed to speak about it. All I can say is that the racing modification is back. So you can buy a regular car and put racing stickers on it.
There are rumours that it'll be possible to tune your car optically. Is this true?
Sorry, but I'm not allowed to answer this question. All I can say is that you can buy different rims for your car once again and the choice of rims will be a lot bigger than with all the previous installments.
Were you able to get some licences you didn't have before, like Porsche, Lamborghini and Ferrari?
Unfortunately we didn't get Porsche because Electronic Arts has the rights to that marque. This is no problem because we still have RUF.
We had the license for Lamborghini but for some reason we weren't allowed to use it in Europe. This time we made it, though. You can expect some Lamborghinis in GT4.
We're still trying to make an arrangement with Ferrari. Ferrari wants to be in GT4 and we want Ferrari to be in it, but EA still has a contract with Ferrari for 5 years. If we can include Ferrari we certainly will, even if we have to postpone the release date for it.
There are rumours that there will be exterior damage in GT4. Is this true?
Sorry, but that's not true. It would require too much development. If we have to make a thousand cars, all with vehicle damage, we won't be ready in the next ten years.
Finally, when will it be released?
Here are the release dates :
Japan : October 2003
America : December 2003
Europe : Februari 2004
Thank you Polyphony !
By the way, nice avatar. 
Lol. 
