Toyota Has Introduced An Exciting New Way To Get A PS5 For Gran Turismo 7 – Jalopnik

Excited for Gran Turismo 7? Have a PlayStation 5? I’m willing to be plenty of people reading this answered those two questions in alternate ways. Particularly the “yes,” followed by “no” way. If you answered the other way around, cool I guess? I’m not sure why you’re reading this story, but you do you.

Anyway, Sony has a new strategy to get consoles out there to the people who have been wanting them: Buy a car. Not just any car, but a special edition of the five-door Toyota Yaris with the 1.5-liter hybrid powertrain churning a scintillating 115 brake horsepower. It’s called the Yaris GR Sport GT7, and it comes with a PS5, a second controller and a copy of the upcoming installment of The Real Driving Simulator. It’s also not available in the States as I’m sure you gathered by now, because Toyota doesn’t sell the Yaris here anymore.

Hell, it’s not even sold in every territory the Yaris is, because Toyota is apparently extending this offer exclusively to Spanish customers, and only 100 of them at that. So, for those of you who do live in Spain and are in the market for an adequate-but-not-especially-thrilling B-segment hatch and would like to play the year’s most anticipated racing game on the console it was intended for, you’re in luck. The rest of us — me included — can screw off.

The great irony of this tie-in is that, as we all know, Toyota makes a more exciting version of the Yaris that’s actually deserving of GT7 branding, but that’s not the hatch that has received the honors here. On a certain level I can sort of understand that, because the GR Yaris is pricey and exclusive and this way Toyota can sell cars to the sort of younger folk that might be swayed by a partnership like this. Chances are they don’t have money.

But you’d at least expect some Gran Turismo-inspired accoutrements for the trouble, and they’re just not present on this car. I was amazed to find that the iconic GT logo doesn’t even so much appear as a badge on the back. All you get are a pair of tiny-looking decals on the front quarter panels, which look weirdly not perspective correct in some images and sort of tacke– hey! Wait a minute.

These pictures bear a suspicious resemblance to Toyota’s earlier media of the Yaris GR Sport, but with lil’ GTs Photoshopped in and different text on the plates.

Here’s the ordinary Yaris GR Sport, in a photo hosted on Toyota’s European press site:

And here’s the GT7-branded one:

The tiny decal isn’t the only change. I’ve just noticed the Gran Turismo one lacks rear parking sensors, perhaps to offset maybe a tenth of the cost of a PS5. But hey! At least you get a numbered plaque — also clearly not ’shopped — just beneath the shifter. Here, I dropped an arrow and cropped in a bunch so you can’t miss it:

The Yaris GR Sport GT7 isn’t in Gran Turismo 7 to anyone’s knowledge, likely because the better GR Yaris already is. Also if you were to buy this car, know that you wouldn’t even be getting the steel book special edition of the game that comes with the soundtrack and other goodies — you’d get the standard one. You know, in this ongoing consumer nightmare where people still can’t walk into a freakin’ Best Buy and pick up technology that’s been on the market for 15 months, nothing surprises me anymore.