I'll agree with you on everything you said except for FM2. Forza 2 has damage modeling, realistic handling, and online play NOW. Just because it's a racing simulator doesn't mean it's a rip-off of GT.
everything but the graphics is exactly like gt4. exactly. my friend has it and i have 4 for ps2. he brought it over to my house cuz we had 2 other people there and we played games. fm2 is very very much like it in the tuning, the racing, the levels and also the AI that is totally perfect that never ever makes mistakes. they even copied the speed and turn director.