By coincidence yesterday I chose the original game in Delroys " Xbox History: The Best Games by Month" thread as my choice for May 2005, Spooky!
While I was looking for a cover image I read of its development on wikipedia and this quote stood out to me, even before this thread was made.
The game began with a team of only 20 people and was, according to Turn 10 studio head Dan Greenawalt, originally an excellent simulator, but not as fun as a game. He stated that the team then worked “to make the physics more accessible, more handle-able. So we started on the game.”[14] Greenawalt further noted that he wanted it to be a “car collecting game.” To aid with that Turn 10 hired a designer formerly of Nintendo’s Pokémon team and said that the team “played a lot of Animal Crossing and Diablo II.”
So it was always the intention to lean on Arcade a little rather than go “full sim”. I liked that the hope was for a “car collection game” as well above pure sim, as that is what I always played the games as 