Very nice model, always been a fan of these go-kart/offroad type of cars. I'm pretty sure (though i may be wrong about this) that the car was rendered using a fake gi mel script for maya, i remeber using it to achieve a similar effect. It consists of setting up 32(or more) lights in a sphere around the object and simply rendering it. I think it was called "GiJoe" or something along those lines.
Hope that helps.