PSA: Gran Turismo 7’s Easy Money Trick Will Be Patched Soon, So Act Fast
Here’s how to make a million credits in less than 20 minutes in Gran Turismo 7.
ust over a week ago, Gran Turismo 7’s Spec II update launched, bringing a ton of new content, additional features,
and useful, small changes. One of those changes was an adjustment to the amount of credits Quick and Custom
Races pay out, and players quickly figure out how to use that, coupled with an exploit that had already existed in the
game for months, to their advantage. Unfortunately, Polyphony Digital seems all but certain to patch the trick in yet
another update soon. So let this be a PSA to my fellow players: If you want to make as much bank as possible to
afford that 20 million-credit McLaren F1, do it ASAP before you lose your chance.
Here’s how it works. Custom Races give you the ability to modify almost every aspect of an event’s settings, from
number of laps to precisely which cars your opponents drive. It then calculates credit payouts based on the relative
performance of your cars to theirs, as well as difficulty, along with a few other factors.
Bearing this in mind, players quickly realized they could create a field of 2,500-horsepower SRT Tomahawk X Vision
Gran Turismo cars, then hobble their gearing and suspension setups to ensure they couldn’t reach high speeds or
corner effectively. This lowers the cars’ Performance Points ratings, which in turn decreases payouts, but not by
much. If the player then chooses an extremely slow car like, say, an original Mini Cooper S or an Abarth 595 SS, they
could stand to make a lot of money if they win.
But could a 50-year-old Abarth supermini beat a pack of Tomahawks, even if those Tomahawks are tuned to a glacial
pace? Not ordinarily, but here’s where the key exploit comes into play. See, GT7 allows engine swaps in many cars,
but it currently doesn’t factor engine swaps or upgrades into a car’s Performance Point rating when calculating
payouts for races. So, if you K-swap that old Fiat and crank it up to 425 hp, well—I’m sure you see where I’m going
with this. Here’s how I set my Abarth 595 SS up, courtesy of hyperspeed980 over at
Anyway, the amount of time you have to do this is limited, since Polyphony added mention of the exploit to the
game’s “Known Issues” list on Nov. 9. “In Quick Races and Custom Races, Performance Points (PP) which determine
the selected rival cars and bonus rewards, are incorrectly calculated based off the PP value before any tuning,” the
bulletin reads. It’s likely engine swaps will factor into how the game weighs Performance Points starting with the
next patch, which will certainly cap the amount of money it’s possible to make from Custom Races.
Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. GT7’s economy is much, much more reasonable than it was at launch, but there’s
nothing wrong with making some easy scratch when you can to afford some of those particularly pricy rides in the
Hagerty Legend Cars dealership. I still don’t have that F1, but I have a hunch that’ll change soon.
Leave a Reply