Worst Cars in the Gran Turismo Franchise
Ever since the first game launched in 1997, the Gran Turismo franchise has become loved by many, and well known for its massive variety of incredible cars. However, for every 5 to 10 decent cars, there is one or two crappy ones. Here, we will be celebrating the crappiest of the crappy. Also, this list will be excluding novelty cars, such as the 1886 Mercedes-Benzs, the 1963 Daihatsu Midget, and the Lunar Buggy.The Daihatsu STORIA X4 '00 looks promising enough: a cheap, entry-level hatchback that can be bought as a starter car in most games. And then you get it... And the troubles begin.
This thing is abysmally slow. Yes, it has 118 HP, but it still performs like crap when compared to other cars with 118 HP, such as the Mazda MX-5 Miata '89 or the Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT-APEX '83.
Believe me when I say this, you are better off getting any other Daihatsu. The Mira, Move, and Copen are good Kei cars, and the Midget II has a one-make race associated with it.
The only reason to get the STORIA X4 '00 is for the one-make race in GT2. Get it, put a turbo in it, and run the stock race. As for the RM (Racing mod) race, don't bother using this thing. Get your hands on the STORIA Rally Car for a cool $500,000 and dominate.
Arguably the worst Rally Car ever, and that's going up against the likes of the Nissan BLUEBIRD Rally Car (510) '69. This thing is horrendously slow. Sure, it's a nice-looking car, but one factor puts it on this list more so than any other car: Nostalgia 1979.
In Gran Turismo Sport, there is a professional league race called Nostalgia 1979, which is similar to the amateur league's historic car cup. However, you, the player, are only permitted to take race cars to this championship.
The Renault R8 Gordini '66 is the cheapest one, selling for a reasonable $80,000. Not bad, right? With 101 HP, this thing stands no chance against its contemporaries, including the Jaguar XJ13 '66 and the Ferrari 330 P4 '67.
Oh, and do you want a mean machine like that? Well, you better have a whopping $20,000,000 on you, or hope that the Gran Turismo gods will bless you with one of them for free from the daily exercise.
What does any racer hate more than anything? A slow car. What's worse than that? An expensive slow car. Even worse, an expensive slow car that, when fully tuned, is still slow as molasses.
This ancient beast debuted in GT4 and cost the player a hefty $320,000. It never got cheaper, except from the used car lot in GT5, where, at its cheapest, it was still over $200,000.
So, how many ponies is this thing packing under the hood? Try 93. Yup, you just spent almost half a million dollars on a car with less than 100 horsepower. Oh, and the engine sound is literally recycled from the Volkswagen New Beetle 2.0 '00 in GT2 and GT3.
Dodge had four newer five-seater car models in Gran Turismo 2: the Neon, the Avenger, the Intrepid (arguably the best of them), and the Stratus, arguably the worst of them.
It came at a respectable cost of $20,550. The car displays having 167 HP in the showroom. However, it will drop down to a measly 100 HP when you get it. This doesn't happen with the other three, just the Stratus, making it slower than the Neon!
Also, it's just not as good-looking as the other three. Now, granted, the next generation Stratus is gorgeous, but this car just doesn't have the staying power to be memorable in any way.
You're better off getting the Neon or Intrepid.
This thing is pathetically weak, especially compared to its stronger siblings.
This is the entry-level Clio and can be bought for around $22,000 in GT2 and around $30,000 in GT4 onwards. Compared to other Clios, though, this thing pushes in the low 100s for horsepower and operates on an FF drivetrain. Other Clios push mid-200s HP and are running on an MR format.
Even newer FF Clios do better than this thing. It's basically useless in GT2, and there are better FFs to use in GT4 onwards. I recommend you skip this car.
The Vertigo race car has had an interesting history. In GT3, the 1998 Vertigo race car was an entry-level race car you could get by winning the European league. Sure, it had low horsepower, but with the right work, the car could be amazing. It was always epic to see it get its ass handed to it in arcade mode races. (What were they thinking putting that little car up against the 787B?!)
The 2004 Gillet Vertigo race car, meanwhile, is nowhere near as useful or as good-looking. Costing cheaper than its 1998 counterpart ('98 costing 1.2 million and '04 costing 1 million) and having way more horsepower, you'd think this would be a match made in heaven, right? Not really.
The car had a short gear ratio and could not keep up with the rest in its class. Again, the car was placed up against the big LM race cars, and it suffered.
I'll cut the car some slack as you can fix most of these issues. However, the worst aspect of this car that cannot be fixed is its horrible usage of tires. This thing goes through tires quicker than a spike strip in a police chase.
Another crappy European hatchback that nobody seems to care about.
The cheapest Mercedes, selling for anywhere from around $16,500 to $33,000. This thing is slow, ugly, and just plain dumb. With slightly over 100 HP, there are much better hatchbacks you can get, such as a Mini Cooper.
The plus side of this thing, though? Decent color variety.
An interesting car with a concept that the GT games took zero liberty in showing off is the Schwimmwagen. Like the Kübelwagen, the Schwimmwagen was a WWII-era wartime car used by Nazi Germany. However, the Schwimmwagen is an amphibious car that can be driven on land and in the water. This explains the submarine-like propeller on the back of the car.
However, this interesting concept could have been tested in GT6 with a land and water race, but instead, it was just left there to be slower than the Kübelwagen. Come on! We went to the moon in 6!
I was also going to suggest a history mode where you can see the role of these two cars in WWII, but that would mean playing as the bad guys, and who would want to do that? I can only imagine it... "Driving Mission 1: Drive Hitler To the Reichstag." Man, that would have ended Polyphony Digital...
It's a good-looking car, but it's the crappiest VGT ever.
For those who are not in the know: a VGT (Vision Gran Turismo) is a fictitious car created in collaboration between a car company and Polyphony Digital. These cars are often very fast, aerodynamic, and drop-dead sexy. The earliest one predates the term VGT: the Nike ONE 2022 from GT4. In GT6, more futuristic cars came about, including the infamous yet amazing Dodge Tomahawk.
This one's from Daihatsu, a subsidiary of Toyota known for small cars, and is based on their well-loved Copen Kei Car. And that's the problem.
The average Copen only has 63 HP, and this VGT, which is supposed to be this big, furious machine, only has about 146 HP. Granted, that's more than the regular, but still laughably low.
Compare this to the Mini Clubman VGT. Mini Coopers are known for being on the low HP side too. The Clubman VGT has 389 HP. Come on, Daihatsu! Don't be afraid to get liberal with the horsepower.
Not to mention, all VGTs cost the same amount: $1,000,000. Yup, for a million dollars, you can get either a 146 HP Daihatsu or a 2,000+ HP Dodge. Your choice, fam!
I'm putting both of these together for this entry.
Originally intended for Gran Turismo 2's drag racing feature, which was eventually removed, these two cars, alongside the racing modification for the Dodge Intrepid, are the remaining vestiges of such an idea.
Both cars have the highest horsepower count of any non-modified car, at 1,011. However, both of these cars only do a maximum of 230 miles an hour, and they're horrible on steering.
A fun novelty, yes, but these two cars will only do decently on the test course. Have fun racing them anywhere else. Oh well, at least they sell for a quarter of a million dollars.
Quick shout-out to the Renault Espace F1 from GT2, which showed that minivans can be badass and fast. The Honda Odyssey, meanwhile, was the opposite.
Who at Polyphony Digital thought it would be a good idea to give a nod to the Karen demographic?
This thing is just a standard minivan. One you'd take your kids to soccer practice in, or maybe run for groceries. Sure, it's a nice laugh to see it run against the likes of a Renault Clio or a Honda S2000, but other than that, who really wants this thing? It's heavy, not aerodynamic, and kind of hideous.
When the electric/combustion engine hybrid, the Prius, hit the market in 1997, the world cheered. "Yes! An end to fossil fuels! We can slow global warming! It's a revolution!" we all collectively said to our friends on MSN. So, just two years later, Polyphony decides to add this revolutionary car to the lineup, and we were not feeling it.
The Prius was incredibly slow for what it was, a compact car. It had a laughable 63 HP, equal to that of a Kei car. Acceleration and weight weren't that bad, though.
However, what truly makes this car painful is that you couldn't modify it! Yup, no exhaust, no flywheels, no racing chip. You gotta run this thing stock!
And there was a planned racing mod for this car, too? Thank god PD scrapped that.
Luckily, for you eco-warriors out there, the Prius has gotten better in later games, and it even has a race car variant.
There's a first for everything, and sometimes the first sucks. Such is the case with the Mazda Demio LX G Package '97, which was the first 'slowest car ever' in the franchise.
Sure, it's been dethroned by the likes of the Subaru 360 and Fiat 500 series, but this car remains the laughingstock of the first GT, with its low 79 HP. Yeah, this was before Kei cars came to the game.
Well, at least they made up for it by giving the Mazda Demio an A-Spec tuning kit.
The first truck in the franchise, and it was awful. Only 31 HP, which is half of a Kei car, and abysmal aerodynamics. This thing would have been classified as a novelty, but they actually made you use it in GT2 and GT4. After that, it just took up space.
It pains me to put this one here, as it's one of my all-time favorites. However, I'm a fair man, and I'll go over the reasons this car is hated without inserting my 2¢.
The Intrepid was heavy and difficult to steer. Not to mention, they went with the FF layout ES instead of the rear-wheel drive R/T, which could chew up other cars and spit them out easily.
And then there's that racing mod, which is one of three drag racing cars. Sure, it looks kind of cool (sorry, had to…), but why didn't they give it a NASCAR stock car RM like the Ford Taurus SHO '98?
Oh, this thing. What a disaster it was.
This early Beetle was winnable in GT4 from the Beetle Cup and was abysmally slow. It also had this issue with the engine, where, when you shifted gears, it would act funny in the process for a few seconds.
Sure, it could be tuned and made to run less crappy, but it was soon replaced by the 1200 in Sport, where the latter proved to be somewhat useful.