Project CARS 1 is NOT beyond saving: a modder's perspective
This was half a day of coding, most of it figuring out why I kept causing ctd's. I only made changes to a few mod cars I downloaded, but the theory stretches across the game. Tire lessons learnt over the years and the standard inertia fixes that modders have been putting into SMS games since shift. End result is my own carcass construction from the old alternate handling mod (SMS fixed the same issues as I fixed here in PC2) and the standard pcars1 street tire tread model with some small but significant changes to how heat transfer and buildup works on the surface of the tire, as well as how solid the rubber is when it's heated up.
Project CARS 2 has a massively better differential/drivetrain model, but SMS chose to cut modders out of the tire creation process early on in development. PCARS3 also made improvements to chassis inertia, as well as incorporating improvements made by modders into a basic driveline shunt imitation. I have no doubt that incredible things could be made with this engine, but without modders allowed in its tire model it's not getting the refinement it could.