We’ve known for about a week now that Gran Turismo 7’s August 2025 update would include Chevrolet’s new Corvette CX concepts. What is a little more surprising is that they’re not the only new cars the game is slated to get in the coming days. This will be a four-car update, as creator Kaz Yamauchi confirmed in one of his usual teaser tweets. The jury is still out on the identity of the one in the back left—some seem to think it’s a production version of the ho-hum Afeela 1—but the consensus on the one to the right appears to be a quirky minivan that has a history within the series.
It’s a Renault Avantime! And this one excites me a bit, because while most of us are likely fatigued by the drip feed of compact crossovers that Polyphony has insisted on with the last several updates, the Avantime is a strange beast: a chic, two-door van with imaginative design and thoughtful engineering you’d never expect in what’s historically been a mundane segment. It’s actually developed quite the cult following, and the more that you learn about it, the easier it is to understand why.
The Avantime’s roof isn’t painted silver—that’s exposed aluminum. Renault incorporated aluminum throughout the vehicle’s construction, which was naturally based on the Espace. The Avantime, however, had two large doors with trick hinges to improve ease of entry without consuming much space. The roof was all tinted glass, and the dashboard was almost as spartan as a concept car’s. With the press of a single button, the driver could open all the vehicle’s windows plus a portion of the overhead glass.
This was a confounding vehicle that nobody had asked for at any level. Renault sold just over 8,000 examples across a production run that began in 2001 and ended in 2004. It’s fascinating that it existed at all. Rumor has it that the Avantime was almost imported for sale in the U.S. through Infiniti, as a result of Renault and Nissan’s then-new and now-deteriorated alliance.
As for the Avantime’s wider importance to enthusiasts, I’d be remiss not to mention that one episode of Top Gear where Clarkson, Hammond, and May take one of these and try to upgrade it until it can lap their test track faster than a Lancer Evo X. It was the ultimate test of real-world Gran Turismo, taking a slow car and attempting to turn it into a giant-killer. Fittingly, the Avantime was also included in GT4‘s massive roster. Renault offered it with an optional three-liter V6 making 207 horsepower linked to a six-speed manual—though that was only good for a nine-second 0-60-mph dash.
I look forward to buying two of these in GT7: One example I’ll keep stock, and another that I will attempt to do up in the spirit of Top Gear’s failed project. I doubt the game will have an option for a plywood front splitter, though. Expect the update to drop in the early morning hours of Thursday, August 28.
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