Hi everyone,
My name is Vale and I'm new here. I'm a flash indie game developer. For more than one year I'm working on my car racing game and reading some topics on this forums I'm very worried about using real life cars into my game. So my question is not "can I use real car into my game?" or something...
I want to try the legal way, I'll try to contact the cars manufacturers companies and to ask for permissions... But now, what are the chances for an indie game developer to obtain the permission from grand car manufacturers?
I think the best deal for me will be to propose them to allow me to use their cars into this game, and I have to assume the obligation to advertise their products into my website (banners and so on). What do you think about that? Is someone here who has done a partnership with cars manufacturers already? Is there a standard letter that I can use in order to ask them for permissions?
If someone could help me I'll appreciate. Thank you
Vale

1. what are the chances for an indie game developer to obtain the permission from grand car manufacturers?
3. Is there a standard letter that I can use in order to ask them for permissions?

1. Not very good, but you might as well try anyway. IOW, why bother asking what the chances are? They're zero if you don't try.
3. No.

I don't think the chances are good because Licensing cars for video games is expensive. For one the car company have to pay their expensive lawyers to do the paperwork so any deal you offer must make them enough money to get a profit on top of the costs. Second they know that big publishers pay a lot of money to car companies for the rights to use their cars. If a car company grants you a license they are going to want the same sort of deal. Advertising on your web site would only be of interest if you have millions of readers otherwise its of no real value.

Add to this the fact that you will need to hire a lawyer to do the deal for you and you will probably end up spending more money than you would earn.

Thank you for your answers. The best think now is to create concepts cars(cars that has nothing in common with real life cars) and let my users to play with these cars. And after few months hope to have enough money in order to buy the rights to user real cars.
But now, what a racing game, without real life cars into it, will be...?

I know a few racing games that had cars that roughly resembled real cars and had fantasy names.
Flatout and crashday come to mind.
A Honda CRX would be named just C-X or something. However, before going that route, you should *absolutely* make sure to be on legal grounds.

But now, what a racing game, without real life cars into it, will be...?

It will be an indie game. If you don't have $30 million to make a triple A racing game you should make an indie game - don't try to compete with giant dev studios because you will lose. make something fun/interesting/indie instead. Something they won't make because they aren't indie. Play to your strengths and don't try to be something you aren't.

I have to keep my feets on the ground. I'm working for about one year on this game and I expect to have a little bit of success... hope that.
I'm looking on the Car Town Facebook game which has +1 mil users each day. On the Policy page they say that they have licenses for every car used in this game, and there are lots of cars.
The only solution for me remain to get a real life car and to change the headlights shape and others important shapes of that car. The result will be a 'brand new' car with few elements in common with real life car.
Thank you again guys for your support. Hope to have this game soon online.

I don't think featuring real-world cars and brands is an important selling point for a driving game: it has zero impact on driving gameplay (which is based on physical parameters that must work well rather than imitate real cars closely) and on appearance (your made up cars can and should look as good as real cars).
The appearance and descriptions of your cars should be more than enough to know what to expect from a made up car: a "Miller & Grossmann MkVIII" can look like a prototype for something like IndyCar Series (from the well managed team sponsored by M&G organic foods), or a stock-car racing monster that might have been a BMW M5 in its youth (from the acclaimed Swiss car M&G tuning and customization boutique), or a 1909 experiment by visionary and short-lived M&G car company, or many other things.


AAA driving games often license real brands to be "official" (usually with racing league brands, like Formula 1), to imply that the game is good enough to have reputable brands associate with it, to avoid looking cheap.
None of these reasons apply to a small, low budget game; in fact, featuring some famous brand might mark your work as an "advergame" of doubtful quality.

Among games I know, only the Gran Turismo series takes serious pride in its real car reproductions; but even in that case it is only an opportunity to show off (look how faithful our reproductions are!) and perhaps a motivator (catch/beat this car you know so well if you can!), not an essential part of the actual game of driving well enough to unlock more cars.