In my opinion still the best racing game Ever made. It's quite realistic for the nineties, but it's not too hard at all.
Like, what I don't understand, you cannot modify the R390. People always say its the greatest car ever, but I can barely drive it because the way I set up my cars is that it steers very light, while this one feels like it weighs 3 tons to me.
But that doesn't keep the player from having fun, since there are still hundreds of cars to choose from, most likely including your own favourite. Especially if you like Asian tunercars. The game has a phew dozen RX7's for instance. Even the Les Mans version, and a Japanese pre-tuned track version, the GT-C (you got to win that one tho). It also has tons of skylines, impreza's, mx5's, etc etc.
Also this game has some legendary cars like the rs2000 which is completely insane after tuning and for instance a GT1 S2000 which produces a whopping 500+ horsepower while just weighing under a ton. Offcourse it also has loads of musclecars and European cars from most manufacturers, but in any simulation you´ll find out that they often do not have the potention Asian tunercars have.
Also drifting in this game is great, I havn't yet found a game where drifting is so much fun. If you don't know how to set up a drift car, just set the camber front to 0.2 and rear to 1.6 and put good tires on the front and crappy at the back. It's not perfect and the setup differs between cars, but that should work in most cases.
For the tuners out here, the setup options of the car is quite insane for the age of the game. You can set up the suspension stiffness (springs and shocks seperately), the stabiliser, the toe, the camber, and the downforce (after buying racemod) to make any car handle just like you want it. You can even set up things like the LSD. Also you can offcourse edit the gearbox to your liking.
To wrap it up, it´s a great game with loads of cars, quite some tracks and lots of tournaments, for Mid engine, rear wheel drive, 4wd, any possible setup has a tournament, plus endurance races, which arn´t as much of a pain in the ass as you might imagine. You just need a good car with, preferbly, a racing mod.
And for the tuners, this is one of the best older games out there, especially for it's realism.
So go out and find yourself a copy now! xD Combined with a PS1 it should still be cheaper then any new game.