Grand tourer

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A grand tourer (Italian: Gran Turismo), sometimes initialised GT, is a high-performance automobile designed for long distance driving. Any such car could be considered to be a grand tourer, but the traditional and most common body style is a two door coupé with either a 2-seat or a 2+2 seat arrangement.

Grand tourers differ from typical sports cars (such as the Chevrolet Corvette or the Porsche 911) in that they are usually larger, heavier (commonly over 3500 lb), and tend to make less compromise in comfort for the sake of driving ability. For this reason they mostly have front-mounted engines, which leave more space for the cabin than mid-mounted engines. They also tend to have softer suspension to provide good ride quality. However, grand tourers do have similarities with sports cars, such as the fact they mainly use rear or four wheel drive, and the term sports car may be used to describe a car with grand touring qualities. Very high-performance grand tourers, such as the Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano and the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren may be considered to be supercars.

In certain professional motorsport classifications, such as the FIA, It defines a GT car as "an open or closed automobile which has no more than one door on each side and a minimum of two seats situated one on each side of the longitudinal centre line of the car; these two seats must be crossed by the same transversal plane. This car must be able to be used perfectly legally on the open road, and adapted for racing on circuits or closed courses." Using the above definition, It is still valid to place sport cars such as the Corvette and the 911 in the grand touring category since they do contain many, if not all, the amenities of a grand tourer. However, this weakness in motorsport classification sometimes blurs the line of what is considered a true production grand tourer, and may lead to mis-classification.

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Examples of Production Grand Tourers

See also