You can’t really own the cars in Gran Turismo – but you can buy this one

You can’t physically own a car in Gran Turismo. You can drive it, tune it, race it and crash it (repeatedly), but it’ll never sit in your garage, and you will never sit in it, either. This Nissan GT-R is different.

A Nissan R35 GT-R raced by Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi is heading to auction at Race Retro on 21 February, offered by Iconic Auctioneers. And this isn’t a showpiece or a marketing mock-up – it’s a proper Nürburgring race car with real results.

Chassis #71 was the first R35 GT-R to contest the Nürburgring 24 Hours, and on its debut in 2011 it won its class. Yamauchi himself was part of the driving line-up, taking the game’s obsession with the Nordschleife out of the console and onto the tarmac – and we are sure he had lots of digital practice! The result helped cement the GT-R’s reputation for toughness around one of the hardest circuits on the planet.

Run by Schulze Motorsport, the car wasn’t an official works entry, but it benefited from close involvement with NISMO and Polyphony Digital. It was later developed towards GT3 specification and even tested privately by Sebastian Vettel, which is one of those details that feels almost too neat to be true.

Rebuilt in 2016 with a NISMO GT3 engine, the GT-R comes with a full history file and spares, and carries an estimate of £150,000–£200,000.

Also in the same sale is the first Nissan 370Z GT4 Nismo built for the PlayStation-backed GT Academy programme. Chassis RJN #001 competed in Europe and was driven by early GT Academy graduates, including Jann Mardenborough. The estimate for that is between £50,000 and £60,000.

You can check out the cars for yourself on the official website - sadly, you can’t trade your in-game GT credits in the actual auction!