Since its beginning Gran Turismo has been about bigger, faster, more turbos, more horsepower. The games encourage players to race more, to earn more credits, to buy faster cars, leading to bigger garages, and to increase the performance of these cars by tuning them up. But some players have decided to go the other way.
Over the years players have always come up with novel ways to play games. Witness the knife-only rules in Call of Duty multiplayer, leading to hilarious showdowns, or the nuzlocke runs of Pokemon. On the Gran Turismo subreddit, players have been sharing their lowest performing cars and actively building the lowest PP cars.
In Gran Turismo 7, PP stands for Performance Points. It's the game's way of measuring the performance of a car, and although it can be a blunt instrument, it does help to ensure events are limited to certain vehicles and helps to balance the game. PP can vary quite easily. Changing tires from 'hard' to 'soft' can greatly increase PP, for example, while adjusting settings like a car's ride height and aerodynamics can also alter PP.
The OP on thread 'I got bored and made the lowest PP car I could' shows off a Fiat 500 F '68. The car has 8 BHP and a PP of 27.22. That is pretty low. Even though this Fiat weighs not very much, it is simply very underpowered by modern standards. In fact it is so underpowered that it could struggle up some of the hilly sections on some race tracks especially if players approach the climb in too high a gear.
To get his car to such a low PP, the OP says that they set the Fiat 500 F '68's fully customisable computer to 50 percent. They set the power limiter to 50 percent and finally put 200 kg of ballast in the front. Now that sounds like a super slow car. You can do all these things by buying things like Power Restrictor and Ballast from the tuning shop and then making the necessary adjustments in Car Settings. Maybe the challenge of making a super low PP car can help players sharpen their skills so they can learn all the ways they can down-tune their car.
While a 27 PP is pretty low, another player apparently got their car down to a PP of just 11. Nine months ago, they shared a video of themselves taking on the mighty Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. It struggles to crest the hilly Eau Rouge section and makes for a rather comical video. So it seems this little game of making a low PP car has some players out there and the rusty bangers they like to make is something else. Why not have a go yourselves and take on the 'make a low PP car' challenge? See you on Nurburgring.