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If ever you needed an incentive to get better at playing Gran Turismo 4 on PlayStation it is this. Forget nitrous oxide and 24in spinners... hiding in the depths of the new GT4 garage, awaiting enough skill to unlock it, is the most outlandish four-wheeled monster to ever grace a gamer's screen: Jay Leno's Tank Car.

The 190-inch wheelbase chrome dragster, powered by a 1,600hp M47 Patton tank engine has 1,600lb ft of torque, pulls a quarter mile in 12.9 seconds, has a six-speed 'box and travels 11 feet on one rotation of the rear tyres.

The Tank Car is in GT4 by accident. Sony first asked Leno, the famous US chat show host, if it could visit him to record the sounds of his Lambo Miura, McLaren F1 and other greats in his garage.

"So Sony came down with all the testing equipment and then the guys went 'What's THAT?!' " recalls Leno of the moment the game technicians saw the 18-foot monster lurking in the corner of his garage. "They got all excited because it looks like a giant. It looks like something that'd attack Tokyo. It looks like Godzilla.

"There was a lot of chattering. And then they asked if they could take some pictures and I said yeah. So they took pictures of the Tank Car and said how do you feel about this being in the game. I said that would be fun."

The Tank Car was originally introduced to Leno by a friend called Randy Grubb. It arrived on a trailer, with no brakes, headlights, indicators or any suspension, and had only a rudimentary transmission - you can see why he snapped it up.