Better known today as the developer of Skyrim and Fallout, Bethesda once had a well-respected racing game franchise and were deep into development of a licensed Skip Barber Racing title that never released.
As a direct ancestor of iRacing, the ‘Grand Prix Legends engine’ had multiple stock car racing false starts, before eventually releasing as NASCAR Racing 4. The original NASCAR 3, cancelled and replaced by one that used NASCAR 2’s engine, is barely remembered.
Volvo Car Corporation and SimBin Development Team released Volvo: The Game in May, 2009. It was completely free, and could be downloaded originally from the Volvo Web site. A fairly interesting marketing experience, the software was downloaded more than 50,000 times in two days. The software was developed with quite a few optimizations to try to minimize the system requirements. The intention was that anyone with a relatively recent PC would run it.
It included the Volvo S60 Concept road car and Volvo S40, Volvo 850 Estate, Volvo 240, Volvo C30, Volvo S60 race cars. Just two circuits were included: Gothenburg Eco Drive Arena, Sweden and Autodrome Chayka, Ukraine.