Due to GFWL issues with DiRT 2/3 I spent some time figuring out how to get Richard Burns Rally installed on my Win8.1 PC recently. Even just running the basic unmodded game is astonishingly intense.
With a few tweaks for the FFB and the fixup app to get 1080p resolution set, it's perfectly playable on a modern PC with a modern wheel. In fact it's vastly more playable now that when the game was released back in 2004, due to the FFB only getting better with modern powerful wheels.
The stages are narrow, you need complete focus to judge speeds, force powerslides, miss potholes, land jumps, avoid bankings, etc... When you are thundering along through narrow gravel tracks between pixellated trees you don't really notice how dated the visuals are because of how intense it is to keep the car out of the trees. After you really get into RBR DiRT 2/3 feels wide, slightly mushy and less sophisticated in comparison, bizarre as that sounds.
I can't recommend it enough to rally fans.