Although I agree with you Clm I will defend LFS a little.
Some part of FAIL (our perception fail) is in setups and default head movement. Try doing really roadish setup. Higher, softer, less dumping, less antiroll, inrease some options in head movement menu. That way doing corners gives more info when you are driving like mad.
Another thing is screen. Once I've done some recordings inside a car. Driving was ok but movie was crap. All dirty gear changes looked completely smooth on gauges, on screen and sound. Speed looked like 1/3 of rl. Crap.
LFS waits for tire physics improvements, but is not that bad and I'm glad that I am not one that remember time when LFS had greater tire sounds variety, ie on vertical load - but I'll play volume levels to be sure about that.