GT7's Engine Swap Animation Is The Most Adorable Thing I've Ever Seen

Gif: Adam Ismail/Jalopnik

Gran Turismo 7 is really weird, sometimes maddeningly so. But it also has a lightness and sense of humor to it that’s refreshing in the sim racing genre. Nothing exemplifies this silly spirit better than the engine swap animation that was just added to the game with patch 1.34 last Thursday.

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Engine swaps have been a thing in GT7 since day one, but until last week, you couldn’t buy them at your leisure. Rather, you had to win an engine from a prize ticket or Daily Workout roulette, which was rare. You also had to happen to have the one or few cars that could support that engine, because not any motor can go into any vehicle.

This process has been mercifully streamlined with the most recent update. Albeit, it’s not cheap. I put the 13B two-rotor out of an FD RX-7 Spirit R into a Suzuki Cappuccino and it cost me 225,000 credits. Stuffing the V8 from Nissan’s R92CP Group C racer into an R34 GT-R would have set me back 1.6 million credits. (For a full list of all of GT7’s swappable engines and the cars they correspond with, check this handy guide.)

Screenshot: Sony Interactive Entertainment

So, yeah — you’ll still prefer to win these when you can. But if you haven’t had any luck and missed the unlimited engine exploit last year like I did, at least there’s now an alternative.

The swaps are performed in GT Auto, which itself is a goofy little corner of the game. The animation that plays when you install a wide body modification, for example, shows mechanics tugging in vain on each wheel arch as the DualSense controller’s haptics radiate outward from the center of the pad, to make you feel the stretching. It’s all very charming, and so is the new animation for engine swaps. Sure, you’ve already seen it at the top of this post, but it’s better with the ’40s Looney Tunes sound effects that play in the game:

Credit: Adam Ismail via YouTube

The thumbs up once the deed is done is just icing on the cake. If there was a GT Auto in my neck of the woods, you can be sure I’d go there for all my maintenance needs — though I might skip the car wash that has no visible effect on my vehicle’s exterior. They’re dropping the ball on that one.