The only minivan ever built with a genuine Formula 1 engine — so we ripped out the Renault V10 and dropped in a Nissan VR38. The result is one of the most overpowered cars you can run at 600 PP.
Overview
The Renault Espace F1 is the single most absurd thing in Gran Turismo 7: a 1990s people-carrier with a real Formula 1 engine mounted amidships. The one-off original was built by Matra — a carbon-and-aluminium minivan wrapped around a 3.5-litre Renault V10 lifted from Williams' championship-winning early-90s F1 car, making around 800 hp and going 0–100 km/h in under three seconds.
In GT7 it's a Gr.X special from the Legendary dealership (added in update 1.65). Stock, it sits at 758.58 PP / 799 hp / 1,300 kg, mid-engined and rear-wheel drive. It is gloriously, hilariously fast in a straight line and completely deranged as a concept.
We did not leave it stock.
This build is for credit grinders who want a savage, high-payout Tokyo car — and for anyone who appreciates a build that has no business working as well as it does.
The setup
The whole premise is one act of heresy: rip out the F1 V10 and drop in a Nissan VR38 (GT-R) engine. With max-power tuning the swapped van lands at 599.80 PP / 1,031 hp, 97.1 kgf·m of torque from a 3,991 cc V6, at 1,378 kg — tuned to sit just under the 600 PP cap for Tokyo's WTC 600.
Tokyo 600 grind tune
- Tyres: Sports Soft
- Fuel Map: 1 (pit roughly every 3 laps)
- TCS: 0
- Transmission: top-speed set to ~600 km/h — this car's gearbox doesn't expose individual gear ratios, so you set it via the auto top-speed slider rather than tuning each gear. It works fine in-game.
- Downforce: 300 / 450 · Brake balance 0
- Suspension: ride height 53/60 · ARB 7/7 · damping comp 31/31, exp 43/43 · nat. freq 4.90/4.80 · camber 2.5/1.0 · toe 0.00/0.13
- LSD: initial 0/5 · accel 0/15 · braking 0/5
The catch is a 12× tyre-wear multiplier — the rears get shredded fast, so stints are short and you pit about every three laps. Sports Softs actually outlast slicks across those early stints, which is why they're on it over racing tyres. Tokyo is also the one big-money race where it's genuinely easy to lose your Clean Race Bonus, so watch the white line at the hairpin and never hit the walls head-on (light taps are fine).
For the Spa lap it's the same build on Racing Soft tyres (still under 600 PP), with the front softened slightly for rotation and a touch less rear downforce.
On track
At Tokyo it's exactly what you'd hope: violent, planted, savage down the straights, and eating its own tyres alive as the track dries from wet to slick. It is not quite the outright fastest Tokyo grind — the Cappuccino edges it on pure pace — but it's in the same bracket and brings in around 2 million credits an hour with the Clean Race Bonus intact.
Then we took it to Spa to find out whether a Nissan-hearted minivan could embarrass a proper GT3 car. It did. The Espace ran 2:12.239 — under 600 PP — against a full-power Porsche 911 GT3 (992) at 756 PP, no BoP, which could only manage 2:13.765. The van won by 1.5 seconds while giving away 156 performance points.
Verdict
Possibly the most overpowered car you can build at 600 PP — and it's a van. If you want a high-payout Tokyo grinder with real character, plus a party trick that beats GT3 cars around Spa, build this one. Buy two from the Legendary dealership while you're there: one to swap, one to keep stock for the V10.