But isn't that what you're implying when you say, "I interpret this as having 170 models with interiors and damage…"? That's certainly what Deve and SIM have taken from it; "Only 170 cars can be damaged." My point is, the fact that it only talks about damage in relation to 170 cars doesn't imply that the other cars can't be damaged. Maybe you didn't mean to say that with your clarification, but it certainly seems to be what Deve, SIM, and others have taken from it. Rather than saying, "We know 170 can be damaged in some way," they're saying, "We know 830 can't be damaged at all." You say the translation should be put through a "logic checker," but it seems like their interpretation doesn't pass.
The three big features of GT5 are damage, cockpit views, and head-trackng. So is it logical that these features only work with 17% of the game? Or is it more logical to assume they work with a minimum of 17%, and probably a lot more, so we're probably missing something obvious and important? Basically, they seem to be saying, "From Angela's translation, we know only 170 cars can be damaged," and I'm saying, "No, from Angela's translation, we only know 170 cars can be damaged. We know nothing about the other 830, save that some appeared in GT4." It's a subtle, but important distinction IMO. No, the feature list doesn't say any of the other 830 can be damaged, but it certainly doesn't say that they can't, and it does say that damage modeling is a basic feature of the game engine, with no caveats about what cars it applies to. I don't think it's logical to assume 100% will show exterior damage, but I certainly I don't think it's any more logical to assume only 17% will. To me, it seems logical the actual number is somewhere in the middle. In short, I think it would be most accurate to say, "The feature list tells us a minimum of 17% of the cars will display damage."
And no, I don't have a link to Famine's translation, nor do I know if he actually posted one, but I never finished reading that other thread. All I've seen is what I linked earlier, where someone else translated it as saying, "All with cockpits, 170 with cockpit damage, and the rest with only exterior damage at best," and then Famine said, "Yeah, that's how I read it too." Then I got wrapped up with the "active translation" going on here, and stopped reading the other thread.