GAME ON

A 1071bhp race car is taking Skoda to a new audience. The firm's design boss tells Sam Phillips how a secret lunchtime project made a Gran Turismo dream come true

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When Skoda design boss Oliver Stefani was presented with a car on his birthday 18 months ago, it was the last thing he expected.

"This was a very funny story in the beginning because the designers started this as a lunchtime project," he says. "I didn't know anything about it until the team showed me this concept on my birthday."

The man in charge of Skoda's design future was amazed by the first sketches and animations of his team's latest creation: an outlandish single-seat racing car featuring an all-electric powertrain.

But surely Skoda - a brand with a long history of producing comfortable and robust family cars couldn't roll out a wild electric sports car? So rather than turn the concept car into a production model, Skoda approached Polyphony, creator of PlayStation racing game Gran Turismo.

"Once we got the backing from the board, we took it to Polyphony and asked if they would be interested in the car featuring in the game. Thankfully they agreed and then the whole project exploded," says Stefani, pointing at various sketches of the car through its development.

And so the radical Skoda Vision GT was born, arriving with a 1071bhp electric powertrain, central driving position and active aerodynamics.

But why did Skoda choose to create a digital-only concept, where did the inspiration come from to build a racing car and how did they collaborate with Polyphony to create it?