The yellow-and-white '55 Stanier parked at the Ocean View Hotel

What Rockstar shows

The Vintage Vice City Pack, the GTA VI pre-order bonus, is built around one car: "the timeless two-tone '55 Vapid Stanier sedan". Rockstar's caption for the pack's first image reads: "Jason and Lucia standing outside the Ocean View Hotel holding handguns. The '55 Vapid Stanier sedan is behind them." Under the hotel's pink neon the car looks red. The pack's close-up shots show the real paint: a yellow roof, bonnet and upper body over white lower flanks, split by a chrome spear, with tall fins and round tail lights at the back. Rockstar says players can "cruise Shore Drive in this classic sedan" and keep it in the Shore Court garage near Ocean Beach.

The same car in Vice City

In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the Ocean View Hotel on Ocean Drive is Tommy Vercetti's first safehouse. Parked out front is an Oceanic, a 1950s-style four-door sedan, and at that spot it always comes in yellow and white. It sits right outside the game's first save point. A two-tone fifties sedan outside the same hotel in GTA VI is a direct callback, and Rockstar made it the pack's headline car.

A first look in Trailer 1Unconfirmed

Fans noticed the idea long before the pack was announced. In Trailer 1's neon Ocean Drive shot at about 0:33, the same frame that shows the CH33TAH plate, a yellow car is parked by the hotels. A Redditor quoted by Dexerto and The Tab put it simply: "The yellow car is parked outside the Ocean View where it usually spawns in Vice City." We cannot confirm from that brief frame that it is the same Stanier model, so treat the Trailer 1 sighting as likely rather than certain.

The real car on Ocean Drive

The Avalon Hotel at 700 Ocean Drive in Miami Beach is a 1941 Art Deco building by Albert Anis. A bright-yellow 1955 Oldsmobile Super 88 convertible is kept parked out front, and the hotel calls it "one of the most photographed cars in America". For anyone who has walked Ocean Drive, the yellow fifties car outside a pastel hotel is as much a part of the street as the neon.

Is the Avalon the source?Unconfirmed

Rockstar has never named the Avalon, but the pieces line up. The model year is the same (1955), the colours are the same, and both games park the car outside a beachfront Art Deco hotel on their version of Ocean Drive. GTABase, among others, reads both the Vice City Oceanic and the GTA VI Stanier as references to the Avalon's Oldsmobile.

The match is not exact. The real car is a convertible, and both game cars are hardtop sedans. The Stanier's body looks more like a mid-fifties Ford, which fits Vapid, GTA's Ford parody brand, than an Oldsmobile. In the games the hotel is the Ocean View, not a stand-in called Avalon. Our read: the colours and the spot are the reference, and the car underneath is Rockstar's own.

Explore next

• The Cheetah Classic on Ocean Drive wears a CH33TAH platerelated toUnconfirmed[3]
• The Ocean View Hotel, Tommy's first safehouse, is backrelated to[2]

More easter eggs

• Theory: "Love Is a Long Road" was picked as a joke about the waitTrailer 1 is set to Tom Petty's "Love Is a Long Road". Many fans read the choice as a double meaning: a song about Jason and Lucia, and a nod to the decade-long wait for GTA VI.
• Theory: "The world is yours" in the Vintage Vice City Pack is a Scarface quoteRockstar's copy for Lucia's Vintage Vice City outfit tells players to "show everyone the world is yours". That is Tony Montana's motto in Scarface, the film Vice City borrowed from most, but Rockstar never names the source.
• Theory: A gecko in Trailer 2 is wearing Tommy Vercetti's shirtMore than a year after Trailer 2, a Reddit user pointed out a decorative gecko on a shop wall whose body looks like Tommy Vercetti's patterned shirt. It's on screen for under a second.
• Theory: Cal's bird line is a Birds Aren't Real jokeOne of Cal Hampton's official quotes complains about "way too many birds flying around in perfect formation", which reads a lot like the satirical Birds Aren't Real movement.
• Theory: Interstate 404 is a "404 Not Found" jokeTrailer 1's overhead highway signs send Vice City drivers onto the 404. The number looks like a nod to the web's "404 Not Found" error, and it does not follow the real rules for numbering US interstates.
• Theory: Leonida Keys bridge may echo Florida's Seven Mile BridgeTrailer 1 shows a modern highway bridge beside an older span in the Leonida Keys. The paired layout resembles Florida's Seven Mile Bridge and Old Seven Mile Bridge, though Rockstar has not confirmed a direct copy.