Page 61 - The Book For Men Spring/Summer 2024

eyeballs. And the video game industry as a whole was valued at $254 billion USD in 2022. It’s projected to hit almost $1 trillion by 2032, according to research by market data consultants Spherical Insights. So why wouldn’t brands be investing?
This also explains why Genesis put as much care and thought into the design of the X Gran Berlinetta as the automaker would a real car. That, and it gave the designers a chance to really flex their creative muscles.
“The entire silhouette of the vehicle was designed with aerodynamics in mind,” said Tony Chen, exterior manager at Genesis Design. “Working with [Genesis] engineers, they really challenged every curve, every radius on the vehicle so that it performs at its highest. The vehicle is engineered to cut through the air and be very streamlined.”
Such considerations stand testament to how seriously the designers took this assignment, given that there is no air in a virtual world, so the laws of physics could have been manipulated or, technically, ignored altogether. And yet, in some ways, creating a car solely for digital use was more challenging for the Genesis team.
“It’s pretty intense,” says John Krsteski, senior chief designer for Genesis North America, “because you’ve got a blank sheet of paper, which is oftentimes a little bit more difficult; it’s too much choice. We really wanted to capture a level of realism with this, so we made sure we put the same level of intensity, and the level of precision, into the design that we would with our production cars.”
The Genesis team used real-world design cues to inform the X Gran Berlinetta
concept. The front end, for example, was inspired by the brand’s wing badge. The overall silhouette, complete with flowing lines, long hood, and rearward cabin, was inspired by beautiful prototype race cars of the 1960s and ’70s. Krsteski first noticed these ideas in sketches made by his designers, who would doodle “Vision Gran Turismo” cars in their spare time. “When you realize there’s that kind of passion happening unofficially on a project,” he says, “we thought: it’s time to make this official.”
The Vision Gran Turismo project officially started more than a decade ago, when Gran Turismo founder Kazunori Yamauchi asked manufacturers: “Would you design your rendition of the ideal GT for us?” And Genesis is far from the first brand to heed the call. The first Vision GT was unveiled by Mercedes-Benz in 2013, and has since been followed with models from Ferrari, Jaguar, Porsche, Aston Martin, Audi, Bugatti, Lamborghini, McLaren, and BMW. Coachbuilders including Zagato and Italdesign have even contributed cars of their own design. And, more recently, jewellery and watch brand Bvlgari dipped its toe into the automotive world, rolling out the Bvlgari Aluminium Vision Gran Turismo for the game.
But, despite all of the incredible design work and futuristic flourishes of these digital cars, the goal is bigger than the models themselves. “[The mission] is really to capture future audiences,” says Chen, “and educate them on how to love cars.” Or, in other words: get ’em while they’re young.
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