I think this is one of those areas where the distinctions are personal. For me, a concept car which is not driveable in the real world is a fantasy car as far as representations of that car's driving behaviour are concerned. We're not experiencing a representation of those cars in the game, we're just experiencing the polygon shell of that concept on something mechanically unrelated to it. Inevitably racing sims are a large part fantasy, but that's too much fantasy for me to feel enthusiastic about.
I may well be wrong (for a change!) but I don't believe Lotus have enough data on those cars for PD to be able to model them. They're being touted as production plans for the company, but it seems like there could be more too it than that. Or less, depending on your point of view.
Sorry, that's rambling a bit. Too tired to make anything more coherent out of it, but hopefully it will make enough sense to be worth posting as a reply!
Yes it does make sense and yes it's a personal preference foremost and I can't tell you and you can't tell me which cars to like or not and which cars should be perceived as realistic or not ( if they aren't available to buy in real life ).
We all have our own particular idiosyncratic likes and dislikes but you have to agree that your dislike for concept cars in a simulator ( or fantasy cars ) has nothing to do with the possibility these Lotus concepts may or may not be included.
The fact that the GT-R Proto in Prologue didn't have an interior in real life suggests to me it's just a mock-up in real life ( haven't done research to back it up but that seems logical ) as a lot of these concepts or design studies are simply a shell ( mostly with an interior though ) not capable of running.
The fact it could be driven in Prologue suggests the data gathered from it or supplied by Nissan was enough to make it 'realistic' enough to experience in the game ( it's not as if it cornered arcadey or achieved a topspeed of 500 mph, in fact it drove quite similar to the final production version sans cockpit view which made it a bit irrelevant to me ) so I guess the data gathered of those Lotus cars would be sufficient to provide a real taster of the final production ones.
To be honest, I do experience concept cars different from production or real life racecars in the game, as knowing they either aren't for sale, unlikely or impossible to be driven, or even only existing in the game does make the experience indeed less real perhaps but I use a different mindset to appreciate these cars in the concept of a game, one of curiosity and imagination.
And if these cars could ever be experienced by mere mortals a videogame aiming for simulation might be the proper and only context to do so.
As for pure fantasy cars which don't exist, the Nike concept car was in my opinion a bridge too far as it was clearly a cynical Nike marketing concept to tap into another large potential market and although the car was interesting to drive in itself for a few times I treated it as just an irrelevant oddity.
The RedBull X1 however I clearly look forward to, as it's designed by Adrian Newey ( whom I highly regard ), and RedBull is clearly linked to motorsport ( as opposed to Nike ) and the thought of designing a racecar free from regulations incorporating future and past inventions banned in real life is a tantalising prospect.
This is just a designers or engineers wet dream for a long time ( and debated what it could look like for ages ) made possible for the first time in a videogame as in real life this would be a costly and pointless exercise not being considered.
Unrealistic? Yes, in fact better than realistic perhaps.
