Good analogy! The cars seem to turn by just rotating around the center axis so it holds there too.

I kind of disagree with you. I've played a lot of Forza Horizon 4/5 and it feels almost on par with those at times. Now, does every car handle well? Absolutely not. Some cars are straight garbage when it comes to handling and I can't believe they left those as is, especially the faster/racer cars. Ironically, the less stylish, smaller cars tend to handle the best IMO.

I think part of the problem they've had balancing the vehicle physics is due to the sprawling nature of the game. It's hard to make the physics feel okay in a FPS that also translates well to an entirely different genre of gameplay.

I'm not trying to excuse how poorly some of the vehicles handle, it's just my theory on why they can't seem to nail it across the board. As a side note, I'd say that hopefully Cyberpunk 2 does a better job when they move over to UE5, but UE also has its fair share of problems. Ideally, they'd work with a studio that specializes with car games to provide consultation or something, e.g. Playground Games. I'm not holding my breath, though.

It so hard to drive with keyboard+mouse. Maybe it's better with controller ? I have never tried.

Nah the driving is actually kinda realistic its the feeling of speed thats completely off, You take a corner and expect to handbrake drift around it but spin out or fly into a wall because you're actually going 100kph but don't realise it because the game makes it feel like 30. Further worsened by the spedometer being faked after a certain speed but still being taken into account for things like stopping distance.