GT stands for Gran Turismo — Italian for grand touring. It is now applied to almost anything with two doors and an options list, which is a shame, because it began as one of the more precise ideas in car design.
The original brief
A grand tourer was built to solve a specific problem: cross a continent, quickly, and arrive in a condition to have dinner. Not a racing car, which is uncomfortable by design and useless with luggage. Not a saloon, which is comfortable and slow. Something that could hold a high average speed for eight hours without punishing the people inside it.
That brief produces a recognisable shape. Engine at the front, driven wheels at the back, two seats or two-plus-two, a long bonnet because a large engine has to go somewhere, and a boot big enough for two people's luggage for a fortnight. Gearing tall enough to be quiet at speed. Suspension soft enough to survive a bad road without loosening your teeth.
Why the compromises are the point
Almost every element of a grand tourer is a deliberate refusal to optimise.
A track car wants stiff springs; a GT gives some of that away for compliance. A sports car wants minimum weight; a GT carries sound insulation, a proper interior and a usable boot. A limousine wants maximum comfort; a GT gives up some of it for a chassis that responds.
The result is a car that is second-best at everything and the best in the world at the one thing it was built for. Engineers generally find this kind of brief harder than an extreme one, because there is no single number to chase.
Where the term came from
Italy, in the years after the Second World War, when a genuine road network and a genuine appetite for speed arrived at roughly the same moment. The Lancia Aurelia B20 GT of the early 1950s is the car most often named as the first modern example: fast, beautifully made, entirely usable, and good enough to be competitive in racing without having been built for it.
From there the badge spread across Europe, and eventually across everything.
What happened to it
The letters became decoration. GT now appears on hatchbacks, crossovers and trim levels with no relationship to grand touring beyond the marketing department's hope that you remember what it used to mean.
Which is a reasonable argument for putting the whole phrase on a garment rather than the abbreviation. Grand Touring still means something. GT has been spent.
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