Luxury likes video games

In 2008, the Nissan brand started a project called GT Academy.

It was an annual program in which the best players of the Gran Turismo video game were prepared to make the leap to professional driving in the real world.

By then, the game created for Playstation in 1997 by Kazunori Yamauchi (Kashiwa, Japan, 56 years old) was already a phenomenon that had sold more than 80 million copies.

Its hyper-realistic approach, both in the design and performance of the vehicles and in the highly refined reproductions of the circuits in which they competed, made one think that if a kid was good in his living room spinning at full speed in a porsche pixelated by the Nürburgring circuit, it could also be with a real car.

It was a success during the years it lasted, to the point that it disappeared in 2016 due to

overbooking

of aspiring pilots.

The first winner of the GT Academy, Lucas Ordóñez from Madrid, made the leap to professional competition and finished second in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Eight years later, the relationship between the real and virtual world has changed a lot.

Esports are already a global, professionalized and attractive phenomenon for brands in search of new sponsorable frontiers and creative collaborations.

And above all, the virtual world is no longer so much version B of the real world, but rather a consolidated space with its own idiosyncrasy.

All this becomes more than clear during the Gran Turismo World Series that takes place in Barcelona between December 1 and 3 and to which we attend with the help of Bulgari, a company belonging to LVMH.

The event, with all tickets sold, is the place chosen by the century-old brand to present its Aluminum X Gran Turismo Special Edition watch, a revision of a 1998 model, available with numbers in yellow (1,200 pieces) and black ( 500 pieces).

A scene from the final of the GT World Series in Barcelona.

Vicens Gimenez

The watch pays tribute to speed, integrating a tachymeter, and its motor is the automatic caliber B381 with chronograph.

In addition, all those who pay the 5,200 euros that the device costs will have the possibility of unlocking in GT7 an exclusive car with the same name as the chronograph and whose design, inspired by the Italian sports prototypes of the late 20th century and the aesthetic codes of the same watch, Yamauchi has participated.

The Japanese is a key figure in the development of the universe of video games, but also of enormous relevance within the automobile industry and even in tourism promotion, as reflected in the fact that the Malaga city of Ronda thanked him for the inclusion of its streets in the GT6 naming a walk in the town with its name.

And now also relevant in the luxury business.

When this last point is mentioned to him on the morning of the day of the competition final, he smiles.

“In all these years, we have worked together with the industry, we have shared users, we have evolved together.

GT is educational and the industry knows it.

We all learn together,” says this motor nut who has even competed as a racing driver in the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring, perhaps the most dangerous circuit in the world.

“At three years old I could name all the cars that passed by my house,” he recalls.

The Fira space has been divided into two.

At the entrance, a large exhibition room of vehicle models between the fascinating and the bizarre related to Gran Turismo.

There are also a couple dozen simulators where attendees play GT7.

They are, above all, parents, who take over the available flyers with their pre-adolescent children.

It seems that before teaching them how to ride a bike, they showed them how to ride a GT.

“If you want to see a lot of women playing, you have to go to the Middle East,” says Yamauchi.

The prototype exhibited in front of the stands of Hall 2 of the Fira de Barcelona. Vicens Gimenez

“I have spent many hours of my life at full speed in GT,” says Fabrizio Buonamassa (Naples, 52 years old), executive director of product creation at Bulgari and driving force of this alliance between the transalpine house and GT.

The official story speaks of Buonamassa and Yamauchi's fascination with the book

Curve,

by automobile designer Fabio Filippini, an ode to aerodynamics that exudes passion for the beauty of the car.

It was Filippini himself who put them in contact, and today he came to the presentation in Barcelona.

He wanders with Buonamassa through the room.

Together they stop in front of several of the models on display.

When Filippini disappears, Buonamassa sits in a simulator and plays a game of GT.

His face lights up.

Meanwhile, backstage, the drivers from the 12 countries that will participate in the final (three drivers per team) lounge on sofas.

On the tables, cans of energy drinks and bags of snacks.

In the background, a solitary ham and a dejected cutter.

All my life going to luxury brand events and almost having to use violence to get a bit of ham, and today, instead... “Take a piece, please,” the solitary cutter tells us.

“I can't leave until it's over,” he concludes while the public address system announces that the Bulgari car is going to be unveiled.

Attendees at the GT World Series final play in one of the simulators.Vicens Gimenez

The brand has created a reproduction of what would be its actual size of the vehicle that is unlocked with the purchase of the watch.

It is covered by a tarp in the middle of the room where the competition will take place, at the foot of the stands.

The public goes crazy when the tarp is lifted and the car is seen.

They also go crazy when the Spanish team, the favorite and ultimately the winner, appears, and even many of them, in full patriotic catharsis, stand up when the Spanish anthem plays.

When the GT Academy ended, Coque López (Villena, 24 years old) had just abandoned his career as a motorcycle racer.

To quench his thirst for adrenaline, two years later, when the GT World Series was born, he began competing.

Contrary to what was proposed at the Academy, he went from the real world to the virtual one.

Yamauchi, after unveiling the car he created together with Bulgari. Vicens Gimenez

On December 3, he won the World Series for the second consecutive year.

“It's not the same, but I like it a lot.

And well, here I can't get injured, so my mother is calmer.”

López lives from this, although he does not rule out, if a sponsor appears, being able to return to driving on asphalt in a timely manner.

He is a veteran and is already accustomed even to the presence of brands like Bulgari in a world, that of esports, which in 2022 reached a business volume of almost 1.4 billion dollars.

“I made a video for Dior and last year I was with Bulgari.

They gave me a watch.

“I went to look for it at the store in Madrid.”

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I am already a subscriber

_