Hah! I worked briefly for EA on the sequel to Need for Speed. I found out that one of the rules there is, the more money a game makes, the shorter the timetable for making the sequel. It's funny Yahtzee's picked up on that too (if you ever read this Yahtzee, yes it's very much intentional on the game-maker's part, at least with EA).

Basically, they don't care if the sequel sucks, they just want it done quickly so gamers will still have that fond glow from the previous game and plonk down their money without thinking.

Oh, and if you played NFS 2 and thought it sucked, don't blame me, I only modeled headlights and taillights and got paid a crap wage for the job.

If you thought the worst part of the game was the headlights and taillights, well then, go ahead and blame me.

After that comment, I had to look it up... and based on the screenshots the headlights and tail lights are fine