Gran Turismo’s DP-100 concpet changed everything about Aston Martin.
Aston Martin’s exciting lineup of mid-engine sports cars can be traced back to Gran Turismo, a 2014 Gran Turismo game. Marek Reichman, Aston Martin’s Chief Creative Officer, spoke to CarsGuide about the impact of Gran Turismo on Aston Martin. The game began as a fun design exercise for 15 years of Aston Martin participation. It has now evolved into a legit lineup of mid-engined high-performance cars. Gran Turismo introduced Vision Gran Turismo in 2013. This feature allowed car manufacturers to create digital concept cars for players to enjoy. The mid-engine DP-100 was the first Aston Martin to join this program. The mid-engined Aston Martin featured the iconic front grille of the company and a V12 mid-mounted engine producing 800 horsepower (597 Kilowatts).
To submit a car for Gran Turismo, you need to provide detailed engineering information. This includes CAD files, engine data, and every numeric metric that can be used to describe a car. Aston Martin was required to dedicate legitimate engineering resources to the Gran Turismo game’s DP-100 design and execution.
Aston Martin received many inquiries after the Gran Turismo DP-100 was released. Customers were eager to buy a mid-engine Aston Martin DP100. Marek Reichman, a customer interested designer, created a model that was displayed by Aston Martin at their 2014 Pebble Beach meeting.
Customer interest led to the creation the Aston Martin Valkyrie concept car, which was launched in 2016 The track-only Aston Martin Valhalla came in 2019, and then the reinvention the Aston Martin Vanquish grand touring vehicle as a V6-powered Ferrari fighter. The Aston Martin DP-100 was the catalyst for all these ideas.