Zele International Releases Gran Turismo Edition V36 Skyline

In another case of life imitating art, one more Nissan sports car has shifted from the video game realm to the showroom floor.

Zele International, an after-market tuning house and body kit manufacturer with a reasonable amount of factory support, has released a Gran Turismo edition of the V36 Skyline. The body kit is an exact replica of the in-game car.

Zele's GT V36 Skyline is purely an aesthetic release, though it definitely won't slow you down. The body kit is made from carbon-fibre and will set you back a cool $6500. The 20-inch RAYS wheels are priced separately; at that size costing almost the same again. While Zele's V36 body kit looks fantastic, it's a shame that it is only a body kit.  After all, the Japanese tuning company has a reputation for building some very good cars.

Of course, Zele International is not the first company to take a video game version of a car and bring it into the real world.

Polyphony Digital, producer of the seminal car game Gran Turismo, has always shared a pretty close bond with Nissan. Company head Kazunori Yamauchi is a big GT-R fan, evident from the GT-R's re-creation in every Gran Turismo game.

Polyphony has even designed an in-game body kit for the 350Z, which Nismo ended up building in real life as the first Nismo S-Tune bodykit.

The ties between the companies became closer. The 350Z that was marketed in Australia as the "35th Anniversary" edition was sold in international markets as the Gran Turismo version. Nissan approached Polyphony for assistance, originally asking them for feedback with how the then-unknown clutchless manual in the R35 GT-R should 'feel'.

In the end, we do know that the company designed the computer interface for the on-board telemetry that is the centrepiece of the car.