I really hope this pans out well - I was one of the authors of the software renderer they used - and, if I recall correctly, there was some serendipity in the game's origins:

We had a PC version going well (DOS, Windows, ... FM Towns!), but needed a good PPC mac port and some demos. We met Patrick & Neil through game industry networking, they contracted for this and got coding.

We had specced some ghastly 'design by committee' ideas for demos, details of which are fortunately lost in the mists of time. Thankfully, they kinda ignored the daft ideas and started playing with cars, physics & deformation, and the game was born.

The comments about Patrick's stock car racing are not far off - On one of my support trips to the Isle of Wight, I arrived to find a pile of police cars and Patrick's station wagon (proper US one - timber an all) with a broken wind shield. They had been filming footage for rotoscoping the peds by the simple expedient of Patrick driving at his mechanic (John?) who then rolled over the roof of the car - safety equipment was several layers of jumpers. ISTR the windshield broke when the car was not going fast enough to carry the victim over the roof.

Local offices had complained (I'm sure Patrick jumping out from behind cars with a pretend bazooka whilst being filmed did not help either :-)