Kazunori Yamauchi (山内 一典, Yamauchi Kazunori?, born August 5, 1967) is a Japanese game designer, professional racing driver, and most notably, CEO of Polyphony Digital and producer of the Gran Turismo series. He became the president of Polyphony Digital after designing his first game Motor Toon Grand Prix, a cartoon-inspired racing title similar to Mario Kart. Motor Toon Grand Prix later spawned a sequel, Motor Toon Grand Prix 2, which was the only game in the franchise released outside of Japan. Since then, Yamauchi has fulfilled his dream of creating realistic driving simulators with his massively successful Gran Turismo series. He has also expressed interest in broadening out to other game genres; in 1999 Polyphony Digital released Omega Boost, a shoot 'em up title set in space, which has since proven to be Yamauchi's only foray outside of racing game development.
As a result of Gran Turismo's success, Yamauchi has become an important figure in the worldwide automotive industry. For his help with promoting Volkswagen models in the series, the company gave him a Golf R32.. Polyphony Digital worked with Nissan to design the multifunction display (which relays various pieces of car data to the driver, including G-Force generated, torque distribution and lap times) found in the R35 GT-R. The car as well as the display itself appear in the latest game in his franchise, Gran Turismo 5. He was given a Nissan GT-R for his contribution.
On a video included with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Yamauchi remarked his favorite car design is the Ford GT and he owns two in real life.
Read more about Kazunori Yamauchi: Racing Career