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I'm not entirely sure on it. I do think that the mass of the car including fuel is lumped into a point that can be placed anywhere in the car body, but the forces on the car are distributed properly. One reason being that GT5 cars have massive generic fuel tanks, even the smaller ones, and they don't seem to change behavior going from full to empty or vice versa.
Another thing is that when launching a car, it always goes perfectly straight (assuming flat surface). Out of 1000 cars, I'm sure that more than a few don't have perfect 50/50 left/right weight distribution.
Weight balance also is not changed when you perform a weight reduction, though that is possible to a degree, and as I pointed out above, wheels don't seem to have any mass or friction attributed to them. Take a Ferrari F1 to Daytona and park it so that a wheel comes off the ground on the banking. It will spin forever unless you hit the brakes, and no matter how lightly you touch the brakes, the wheel stops instantly when not in contact with the ground.
This (bold text) is one of the most noticeable flaws in GT5's physics. I'm sure every car simulator treats the car as a point mass with a center of inertia to model how the car moves relative to the background. PD apparently treat the drivetrain forces as acting inline with the center of mass. Why I don't know.
After driving a sim for any real time, the lack of wiggle under hard acceleration and now arcade-like ffb makes going back to GT5 a bit of a bitter pill.