http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvxMEOO4a_E

On October 6th, Sony launched a giveaway competition for a free Gran Turismo 5: Signature Edition package. Since that time, the competition was set to end on the old Australian release date, November 4th. That end date has remained unchanged (confirmed by Google’s cache) – until now. The legal terms and conditions have just been quitely updated to list a new ending date of December 9th.

A German automotive news site, Auto-Presse.de, may have discovered a new real-world track set to debut in Gran Turismo 5: the Hockenheimring. The rumor comes from an SLS AMG press event hosted at the circuit by Mercedes-Benz, where media members were offered the chance to set a few hot laps of their own before riding along with five-time DTM champion Bernd Schneider. A GT5 demo was also on-hand for handling comparisons.

Here’s a rather humorous collection of videos by JDMKING13 showcasing the variation in horn sounds between a Corvette Stingray, Lamborghini Gallardo, Audi R8, and an Enzo Ferrari in what appears to be a GT5 kiosk demo. I’m not sure how closely these sounds match up to the real thing, but this should be exciting for those of you itching to use that horn button on your Logitech Driving Force GT…

British gadget magazine T3 hosted a GT5 competition at the Selfridges department store in London on Thursday, and I’m proud to announce that GTPlanet user Synwraith took top honors (you may remember his interviews with the GT Academy 2010 winners). Check out his extensive write-up from the event for all the details and gameplay impressions from the demo on display. For his efforts, he’s been awarded a voucher for a free copy of GT5, a Logitech Driving Force GT, and has been featured on T3’s website.

Editors from Kotaku Australia were invited to participate in Toyota’s 24-Hour Gran Turismo 5 Challenge at the 2010 Australian Motor Show, and have already shared their impressions from the event. Even though they were admittedly casual players, they enjoyed it quite a bit:

Alternative rock band My Chemical Romance has announced that “Planetary (Go!)”, from their upcoming album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, will be featured as the “lead song in the opening cinematic” of Gran Turismo 5. Before you run over to YouTube or anywhere else to preview the song – don’t bother. The album will not be released until November 22, and as of right now, there’s no way to listen to it.

The no-holds-barred prototype developed by Polyphony Digital and Red Bull has been revealed in the latest issue of Car magazine in the UK! As you may recall, the X1 is the answer to Kazunori Yamauchi’s question: “If you built the fastest racing car on land, one that throws aside all rules and regulations, what would that car look like, how would it perform, and how would it feel to drive?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QZacNDd6vI

Sony hosted a Gran Turismo 5 press event in Taiwan (presumably scheduled before the delay) where a few more new details and screenshots were revealed. Most notably:

More information is slowly filtering out about GT5’s delay, and it fits in neatly with everything else we’ve learned about the game’s production in the past 24 hours. Here’s what was recently posted by Maximus – a respected moderator at the Blu-Ray.com forums with reported connections to Sony:

A GameReactor associate in Tokyo, Gregor Wildermann, has reportedly made contact with Polyphony Digital and Kazunori Yamauchi for further clarification on Gran Turismo 5’s production status: