Rockstar Games has turned six of Grand Theft Auto VI’s cars into real, driveable machines, built with Los Angeles customiser West Coast Customs and filmed on the streets of Miami. The stunt comes eleven days before the game’s launch on 19 November.
Two of them are the Grotti Cheetah and the Progen Emerus; the others are the Pegassi Tempesta, Invetero Coquette, Albany Buccaneer and Albany Manana. Rockstar’s press release says the shop machined wheels and structural pieces on CNC equipment, mixed old-style metal fabrication with composite construction and gave each car its own paint. Number plates for the shoot were made up for the fictional state of Leonida, framed with “VI”, the shop’s name and Rockstar’s logo.
Rockstar has not said which real cars sit under the bodywork. The designs are easy to place, though. Wallpaper* matched each design to a real model, reading the Cheetah as a take on the 1980s Ferrari Testarossa, the Coquette as a current Corvette, the Tempesta as a Lamborghini Huracan in Italian police livery and the Emerus as a McLaren Senna. The Manana and Buccaneer are lowrider-style cars, with the Manana on tall hi-riser wheels, drawn from 1960s and 1970s American sedans and coupes.
This is not the studio’s first try. West Coast Customs also built a real version of the Bravado Banshee in 2013 for the launch of Grand Theft Auto V. The Miami cars follow the same idea: a stunt that gets fans photographing a game car in the wild.
The shoot also put two real buildings on camera, the 1963 Miami Marine Stadium and the parking garage at 1111 Lincoln Road. Both look set to appear in the game as places to visit, which fits Leonida being Rockstar’s stand-in for Florida.
The real-world builds echo something players will do themselves, since Leonida’s shops are meant to let you restyle cars with new paint and trim pieces. The Miami stunt gives that idea a physical form before anyone can try it in the game.
Neither company has said whether the cars are road legal or whether they will be shown or sold after the launch.
GTA VI is due on 19 November for PS5 and both Xbox Series consoles, as listed on Rockstar’s game page.
