Thrustmaster unveils the T-GT III Gran Turismo 7 wheel
Thrustmaster is now an official partner of the Gran Turismo World Series, and it has marked the deal with the T-GT III — the first Direct Axial Drive bundle built for Gran Turismo 7.
Thrustmaster has become an official partner of the Gran Turismo World Series, and it used the announcement to pull the covers off the T-GT III — the fifth officially licensed Gran Turismo 7 wheel it has built with Polyphony Digital.
The T-GT III is Thrustmaster's first Direct Axial Drive bundle made for Gran Turismo, and the first to ship with a load-cell pedal set as standard. The company says the motor architecture, borrowed in spirit from high-performance hypercars, holds a constant 5 Nm of torque with an overshoot capacity of up to 10 Nm. That headroom is there to stop the force feedback saturating, which keeps latency low and the wheel quick to react.
Two haptic effects come with it. GEAR JOLT kicks on every shift, while ENGINE ROAR drives vibration through the chassis in time with engine revs. The bundle includes the leather-finished T-GT wheel with its four rotary encoders mapped directly to Gran Turismo functions, and Thrustmaster says it will keep updating firmware and software alongside the game's SPEC releases.
What it costs and when it lands
The T-GT III goes on sale from 3 December at £649.99 in the UK, €699.99 in Europe, $749.99 in the US and ¥136,400 in Japan, with worldwide availability expected before Christmas. Gran Turismo 7's free Spec IV update is being split in two, with the first half due in October 2026 and the second in December.
It lands at the end of a long line of Gran Turismo wheels: the T500RS GT Edition in 2011, the T300RS GT Edition in 2016 and the T-GT in 2017. Thrustmaster was the official hardware partner of the Gran Turismo World Series from 2018 to 2020, and of the Olympic Esports Series in Singapore in 2023.
Our opinion
Thrustmaster is not chasing headline torque here. A constant 5 Nm is modest next to the direct-drive units that now push past 20 Nm, and anyone shopping purely on numbers will look elsewhere. The bet is on feel instead: purpose-built haptics and a load-cell pedal set in the box, at a price that undercuts most direct-drive bundles once you add the pedals they leave out. That makes the T-GT III the most sensible way into a Gran Turismo-flavoured rig, even if Gran Turismo's own fans are the only ones likely to pay for the licence. Whether GEAR JOLT and ENGINE ROAR read as feedback or as a gimmick is the question December will answer.