Just played it for the first time in years and you know what? It's 10 years old and looks better than GRID, Shift and all that other CM and EA garbage. Particles (smoke and sparks!), realtime reflections, excellent lighting, nice textures and no fckin ridiculous bloom and incorrect motion blur!
Granted, the kinematics and dynamics take some getting used to if you're all LFS-ified, but it's a great game nevertheless. My only problem now is that I can't find any of my memory cards