The VGT cars certainly
have been reported about in other, actual news sites, yes. Car and Driver and Motor Trend both occasionally do articles about them, and those actually are real world media enterprises. Jalopnik is an automotive blog, and the portion of the site specifically related to GT news reporting on GT news is about as "real world" as when GTP reports on GT news.
Even then, though, the caveat you have to consider is whether "rewording and linking to Sony's press releases on a slow news day" or "briefly talking about a concept car shown at an automotive event" can mean the same thing as "real world coverage". Quite a few automotive journalist venues went kinda crazy about VGT as a whole when last year that guy said he was going to try building the Mercedes VGT; and lots of interest outside of the gaming industry was generated as a result. Just like what happened with the GT by Citroen when Citroen said they were looking to build it. The news about the Mercedes may have even run in the actual print magazines, but I cannot remember if it did (the GT by Citroen definitely did, though). In fact, the Mercedes VGT in general garnered a good deal of interest because Mercedes talked about it extensively in relation to their future cars (though whether it actually influences them in any way is another matter).
But when talking about lasting contributions to the GT series' legacy, you have to ask yourself this: How many design student orgasm concept cars are remembered
at all even 5 years after their debut if they don't have tangible correlations to what the manufacturer actually builds? People remember cars like the Cadillac Sixteen because they acted as high profile previews for the future design themes of the brand; and cars like the Volkswagen Nardo because there were serious attempts made over several years to put them into production; even though they are both concept cars over ten years old (the VW pushing 15). In comparison, how many people remember this:
Even though it was from the same time period as the two above and was center stage in a very successful movie?
How many people even know about that thing existing, even though it was shown off at the near the peak of retro nostalgia?
You could pull up concept cars all day just as extreme as any of the Vision GT models have been, and no less effort was put into building any of those than the VGT cars got; and they still fell off the radar almost immediately after the auto shows they were featured in were over.
