VIRTUAL MADE REALITY
The original Gran Turismo game fuelled my burgeoning love of cars like a shot of nitrous. Something changed forever on 12 May 1998 when I plugged in my 13th birthday present – a Sony Playstation – and first heard that Chemical Brothers remix of Everything Must Go by the Manic Street Preachers. My experience of cars from Japan to that point had been limited to a few goes on Sega Rally and my dad's Nissan Sunny 1.6LX... It might be two decades since I first got my thumbs on an analogue stick but I can still remember every apex of Trial Mountain. So swapping that fictional circuit for Blyton Park this month made for one of the best days at work ever. It also revealed what the console never could: the pure, visceral…