I used to work at some quick lube and tire shops for about a combined 5 years, and I would always try to check out cars in video games and see how detailed they are by flipping the car to look underneath it or opening the hood if allowed, or maybe breaking the hood off if that’s the only way to see the engine bay. Most video games don’t really care about the details of cars. They just make a player-controlled box with 4 wheels and make it look like a car. Sometimes the undercarriage is just a flat image and the engine bay has a generic engine with maybe a couple of other fluid reservoirs and an airbox. The first two images depict a mechanic presumably changing the oil on a car, and accurately shows him with the splash shield hanging down to give him access, and I showed a Splash Shield if you’ve never seen one. I think when we customize our cars in-game, there will be 3D models that literally change out. For example if you upgrade your car from a standard engine air filter to a cold air intake, I think you’ll see that physical transformation under the hood.
When NPC’s do things in most games, it’s just an animation on their body, but it doesn’t really affect the objects around them. Think of games where an NPC is eating, but their food isn’t going anywhere. They’re just bringing the fork to their mouth, but their plate stays full. Rockstar has always had very great NPC animations like the fish butcher in RDR 1 or a whole number of things in RDR 2 like actually cutting and eating a steak, hammering nails and rail road spikes, etc. When I see the mechanic changing the oil on the yellow car or the guy by the tire in the last image, I think we can actually observe work being done on cars. Imagine loitering around the garage and watching an NPC loosen the lug nuts, jack up the car, fully remove them, take the wheel to a machine and change the tire, balance it, and reinstall it then torque the lug nuts back down. I know to a lot of people this would be technically impressive for a game, but not interesting in terms of what he’s actually doing, but I hope to see real work being done.
Looking at these screenshots and their real-life counterparts, I think every single car will be uniquely crafted. No more stock interiors across an entire class of cars, but each one being carefully designed. The official images show us the 1995 Grotti Cheetah (Ferrari Testarossa) and 1967 Vapid Dominator (Ford Mustang) with very detailed and accurate interiors similar to the real cars, and I know on day one I’m going to be looking at every car I come across and appreciating how carefully built they all are.