Massive Gran Turismo 7 Spec III Update Landing This Week

It’s been an unusually long two-month gap since Gran Turismo 7 last received a content update, but there’s a good reason why: Polyphony Digital has been busy readying the game’s biggest update in the nearly four years since it launched. Entitled Spec III, we now have official confirmation of what we’ve suspected for a while: the update is landing at some point this week.

Spec III brings eight new cars, two new circuits, and a host of other new and updated features. As usual ahead of an update, series creator Kazunori Yamauchi has taken to social media to tease the car contents.

It’s not much of a teaser, though, because we already knew the identities of six of the eight cars. Four were revealed as part of the original Spec III trailer back in September: the Mitsubishi FTO GP Version R Aero, Mine’s R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R, Ferrari 296 GT3 and the F3500-B, a fictional open-wheeler heavily inspired by early-to-mid ’90s F1 cars.

Then, during last month’s Gran Turismo Live event in Los Angeles, two more cars were unveiled. The new Polestar 5 is making its video game debut in range-topping Performance guise as part of a partnership between Gran Turismo and the manufacturer, but the real surprise came in a brief bit of footage showing the fan-favourite Renault Espace F1, returning to the series 26 years after making a one-off appearance in GT2.

That leaves the last two unconfirmed cars seen in the teaser, and they too aren’t particularly tricky to discern. One appears to be the roadgoing version of the Ferrari 296, most likely in GTB coupe form, and the other, the little hatchback sitting in the back of shot, is a first-generation Fiat Panda. We can guess this not only from its unmistakable boxy silhouette, but also because a behind-the-scenes video from May this year, featuring the car’s designer Giorgetto Giugiaro visiting Polyphony’s offices, featured brief footage of the Panda being modelled for the game.

The two new tracks are just as anticipated, not least because it’s been over a year since a new circuit last appeared in the game. Both are current stops on the Formula 1 calendar making their Gran Turismo debuts – there’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, the notoriously unforgiving parkland blast in Montreal that hosts the Canadian GP, and Yas Marina, by contrast an ultra-modern facility that’s home to the season-closing Abu Dhabi GP.

The update is also bringing a selection of new features to the title, including a lap data logger, an increase to the current Collector Level cap of 50, and a new tyre partnership with Dunlop that’ll likely bring changes to the physics.

The full minutiae are still to be confirmed, as is a solid release date, but 4 December feels likely – not just because that tallies with Polyphony’s tradition of releasing updates on a Thursday, but also because it’ll line up with the launch of the Power Pack, the first piece of paid DLC for the game, which will see proper endurance races finally make a return to the series.