PSA: Gran Turismo 7's Easy Money Trick Will Be Patched Soon, So Act Fast

Just 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 figured 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 close that loophole 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. From there, the game then calculates credit payouts based on the relative performance of your car to the pack, 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 GTPlanet:

And here's how it's recommended to set the Tomahawk up. Note that you will have to spend 1,000,000 credits to buy the Tomahawk X if you don't already have it, but don't worry: you'll make that dough back quickly with this method in less than 20 minutes. Plus, it's good to keep one of these in your garage for the next exploit that inevitably involves this spaceship on wheels, as many have tended to since GT7 came out.

Stack the field with 19 of these hobbled concept cars, place your FK8 Civic Type R-powered Fiat at the back, and make sure to set the AI difficulty to Professional. It'll take about 26 laps to make that million credits, and you'll make even more if you're careful not to hit your competitors as you lap the Daytona oval. (Believe me, with the relative speed difference and how the field spaces out, it'll be harder than it sounds.) You could apply this method to other tracks, of course, though I can't speak to the 595's handling prowess around road courses. You'll see what I mean as soon as you floor the accelerator in this thing from a grid start.

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 highly likely engine swaps will factor into how the game weighs Performance Points starting with the next patch, which will cap the amount of money 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.

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