You could say developers didn't have enough FUEL to polish the game, hah! Looks really interesting tho especially how tornado rips apart houses

Fuel had such a weird vibe... AT times it almost felt like a horror with its spooky atmosphere, no people, destroyed city's and sunken city's. Very Mad Max.

Fuel & Pure, the long lost siblings ..

I spent hours with my friend exploring this map, going on road trips back in 2010.

I still have the same dream where they make a secuel with improved handling, more cars, interior view and a career mode similar to dirt 2 or Grid 1

I spent so much time on this game as a kid. It's a dead world, but it's a massive dead world. I used to look at the map, think "that looks cool, I'll go there and take a look what it is", and drive for the next 2 hours just to discover it wasn't as cool as I thought. But it was cool enough to be rewarding. I never had the skill or patience to finish more than 30% of the game, so my trips to the volcano, the city and the airplane graveyard took me hours.

My opinion on FUEL:
- I 100% it. Yes I did. One of the few. Just to get all achievements. It took me 3 hours just to find the goddamn hovercraft because it was driving around somewhere in the map that made NO SENSE for a hovercraft (somewhere in the snowy mountains as far as I remember).
- The driving physics were nuts. Some vehicles were absolutely ridiculous and fun (like the monster truck, some buggies and some bikes) other vehicles felt like they had the physics of the hovercraft or indeed as you pointed out, felt like modded-in cars in a game that dont have cars.
- It was mesmerizing to drive to one side of the map to the other, encountering multiple 'biomes' to drive through. These days I wouldnt have the time for that anymore, but at the time this came out, I loved to do that shit. I think there was even an achievement or a race that drove all the way around the map. I know for sure there were 2 races that made you drive from top of the map, to the bottom and vice versa.
- The AI was weird. As you said, sometimes they would 'glitch out', even when in-view and just rubberbanded all the way to the finish line. Other times they would drive perfectly behind you and not pass you at all.
- The Hurricane races were set and not dynamic. Either it was a hurricane race or it wasnt. You couldnt find hurricanes during freeroam. This was a missed feature sadly.

The game tried to be Motorstorm so much that it kind of forced to push away its own identity in favor of that of a "motorstorm like one". The tech they used for the big open map was one of the first for a game like this and similar techniques were later used in lots of other games.
The dev team were wholefully inexperienced (a small french Dev team) and only made a few movie tie-in titles (platformers) before creating FUEL. FUEL was their passion project and dream, but they just didnt receive enough development time or help from Codemasters.

Fun fact: They have now made Microsoft Flight Simulator.
...And part of me wants to think that snippets of their 'large map design' engine has made its way in to that game.

I'm going to install fuel on my pc.
My pc: ☠️☠️☠️

Man this game needs a PROPER REMAKE. I loved it, but I was the only one in my friends list :(

when i was younger i unlocked every car and livery. The multiplayer was so much fun because you where able to cruise around the map with people.

Man did you see local fuel prices? That's why 😂

the reason why the music sounds so scatterbrained is because it's procedurally generated on the fly using 10-ish second clips

I used to play this back when me and my family went to the video rental store! I rented this a few times and always enjoyed it! Another one was PURE

I've never heard of the game, but you've inspired me to add it to my list of games to look out for at the local retro game stores

I wish Fuel would emulate properly, cause I've been trying to play it again for the last couple years, even if its has issues

It's been 15 years I'm waiting for Fuel 2. Oh, and I want my copy of Fuel back too !

The ludicrous A.I. is even seen doing impossible things when using trainers, they do indeed teleport like Weeping Angels when not in sight or too far out, and even then, they'll constantly teleport centimeters per second if you are near 'em. That's only for the highest difficulty though.

I remember Fuel! It was the first game I ever had on Steam. My brother asked me to make a Steam account, and I didn't know why. It turned out it was so he could buy me Fuel as a gift.

I had a lot of fun playing it. I remember being amazed at the world size. It was epic at the time. I loved driving around the world, finding cool things, and the variety of the maps. I think I got about a third of the way through before something happened with my computer, and I lost all my progress. I think this was before Steam had cloud saves.

Now I want to go back and see if I can still access it.

The Brazilian Goat is back

I played the hell out of pure and fuel, both of them dominated my childhood with hours of just mindless fun.