“The nods of recognition, the pointing, the fanboys passing out in ecstasy. Witnessing the big power ZR350 revving up to tear a hole through an underground parking lot never gets old. And when you burn these tires out, they’ll fight to see who gets to breathe in your polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – because this much clout is seriously intoxicating.”
So goes the sales pitch for the Annis ZR350, a 30-year-old, two-door sports car that has never existed and never will – because it’s not a real car. It may have all the design hallmarks and specs of a Japanese cult classic born and bred to slice through the streets of Shibuya but it’s not. It’s actually a sleek Scottish clone, first brought to life inside the early-nineties time capsule of 2004’s GTA San Andreas and more recently resurrected for the latest salvo of GTA Online content, Los Santos Tuners.
[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/07/20/gta-online-los-santos-tuners-official-launch-trailer”]
In the two decades since the GTA series arrived in 3D with 2001’s landmark Grand Theft Auto III, Rockstar has fashioned a fake car industry like no other – one that continues to grow and grow within GTA Online. All modern open-world action games that don’t rely on licensed vehicles need to fill their towns and cities with fantasy fleets of automobiles but I don’t think I could name you a single car from any of GTA’s sandbox peers.
Few – if any – can match the garage that GTA Online offers today. A full spectrum of bogus global brands, each one a nudge and a wink at a real-world manufacturer. Hundreds of vehicles, from classic GTAIII Banshees to surprise off-brand Batmobiles, and everything in between. A deep well of customisation options to make any car truly yours. It’s clear GTA Online’s approach to its own internal car culture is as uncompromising as every other element of what’s estimated to be the most profitable entertainment product of all time.
“I guess part of it is legacy,” says design director Scott Butchard on the enduring and fascinating world of GTA’s homegrown vehicles, particularly the ones that have been carried through the series over the last 20 years. “A lot of us have grown up with them; we remember the Banshee, the Comet – they’re cars that’ve been there all our lives.”
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=We%20remember%20the%20Banshee%2C%20the%20Comet%20%E2%80%93%20they%E2%80%99re%20cars%20that%E2%80%99ve%20been%20there%20all%20our%20lives.”]
“But then at the same time, for me, it’s the world-building as well. Other games do cars and they’re cool cars, but the branding on [GTA V] – the UI team and the guys that come up with the badges, the in-world placement, the marketing and advertising for the cars – all makes it feel more fleshed out and more substantial.”
“We’ve got an incredibly passionate team when it comes to vehicles, as you can imagine,” adds GTA Online director of design Tarek Hamad. “But I think another important factor is how [they’re] woven and integrated into iconic moments in the content as well.”
“There’s a real sense of ownership to the vehicle. You form a relationship with it, and then it’s woven into your personal story, both in single-player story modes and in GTA Online as well. So I think that that really helps crystallise the sense of this being an iconic, memorable, or instantly recognisable vehicle across the entire series.”
[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/07/15/grand-theft-auto-online-update-announcement-los-santos-tuners-trailer”]
While all GTA Online updates tend to feature new vehicles (and certainly updates like 2015’s Lowriders and 2016’s Cunning Stunts and Import/Export previously focused on cars as a core feature), the newest expansion to GTA Online – Los Santos Tuners – is arguably Rockstar’s most overt love letter to car culture to date. Featuring a salvo of brand new cars, an addictive batch of new, more authentic street races, and a terrific griefer-proof space to meet and show off the rides you’ve been collecting since 2013, Los Santos Tuners is catnip for car nerds and an excellent update to the always-growing GTA Online.
It’s proven plenty popular, too, with Rockstar revealing that more players joined GTA Online for the launch of Los Santos Tuners than any update so far.
According to Butchard the team has wanted to return to this side of GTA for some time.
“Import/Export was 2016, and that was a great pack and well received by the community, and we always wanted to go back,” says Butchard. “It was just the when; we were just planning on when and how we were going to frame it.”
“With Tuners, after Cayo Perico [and] this big, bombastic heist in this new place, we wanted something to bring us back to GTA and to the mainland. Something that made sense. I think we just wanted to go back to what GTA is; the classics, you know? It’s about cars, and being a getaway driver, and your driving skill, and that whole modding scene.”
“Yeah, and embedding it as deeply as possible in the culture,” adds Hamad. “And crucially giving all players – but especially that mix of players that are absolutely obsessed with cars, car meets, car culture – a safe space to breathe, without the fear of being disrupted or blown up. Where they can show off these rides – both the new rides that are introduced in Tuners, but also everything that they’ve been building up over the last eight years.”
Of course, while cars are a key focus for the Los Santos Tuners update, there’s actually a lot more under the hood of this latest expansion to the world of GTA Online. Hamad explains the LS Car Meet ultimately serves as a gateway to “open the doors into that other side of the quintessential GTA experience, which is this element of crime and being a wheelman.”
Visiting the LS Car Meet gives players the opportunity to buy their own auto shop, and owning an auto shop unlocks a regular stream of mini-heists that can be played solo or with groups of up to four. It also comes with a regularly refreshed blackboard filled with cars to steal and deliver to a crane at the docks (a nice throwback to a very similar side-hustle available in GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas). Combined with the new races, Los Santos Tuners is a very layered update, something Hamad confirms was no accident.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=%5BLos%20Santos%20Tuners%20is%5D%20very%20large%2C%20it%E2%80%99s%20very%20layered%2C%20and%20it%20was%20built%20exactly%20to%20be%20like%20that.”]
“It’s very large, it’s very layered, and it was built exactly to be like that,” he says. “So that you first get introduced to the car scene and culture in the LS Car Meet, but then it opens the door to all of this layered content.”
“We’ve just got such a fantastic and varied community that we felt it was really important that we layered stuff in for them to discover that caters for so many different player types that want to engage with different types of content. There will absolutely be players and community members who just want to focus on the races when they discover just how deep you can go and the rep that this gives you for the Car Meet and the kind of unlocks you can get as a result, including the prize ride. And then of course there’s a great swathe of players who are so invested in the bombastic content, the robberies, the mini heists; there’s a whole contingent of players who just absolutely love that kind of content. So it was really important for us to build it in that layered, discoverable way.”
GTA Online’s car enthusiast communities are amongst some of the most dedicated players in the game and have carved out a strong reputation for their enthusiasm for hosting car meets in the game’s regularly dangerous open-world, their skilled photography, and even their ingenuity in finding a peculiar but effective in-game method to lower their cars beyond the limits of what GTA Online’s customisation options allowed. Catering to this devoted community was a “huge priority” for Rockstar with Los Santos Tuners.
“I mean, we stay connected and follow the community at large – that almost goes without saying,” says Hamad. “But when it comes to the more specialised focus communities you’re touching on, such as the car meet community, [it’s] a huge priority.”
“If we took that example of how they stanced their cars by shooting their wheels, we now officially support that as an option. So they no longer have to shoot their wheels, and that’s something that we’ve been looking at for a long time.
“We had to make sure – and we wanted to make sure – that we supported it in this update because it is just such an important factor and feature of the car meet community. So they no longer have to find their own workaround for that. It was very exciting to be able to follow that and then get this included as part of the update.”
With a larger collection of cars than I currently have time to drive in GTA Online, it’s likely my own ZR350 will spend most of its time in storage, parked between my Dom’s Charger knock-off and my Penumbra clad in its lime-green ‘Almost Had You’ livery. I currently have a garage dedicated entirely to cars plucked from whatever GTA’s fantasy equivalent to The Fast and the Furious would be (plus a horde of other films) so the RX-7-inspired ZR350 is a welcome inclusion.
Of course, I also have a garage full of wild supercars, and another packed with lowriders, and another with a growing batch of rally cars in it. More cars have been added to GTA Online than there were in the game to start with, and every one is the product of a team that truly appears as passionate about cars as I am.
“I would describe it as a genuine love,” confirms Hamad.
“An utter obsession.”
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]
Luke is Games Editor at IGN’s Sydney office. You can find him on Twitter every few days @MrLukeReilly.
