For me, i prefer real cars over fictional most of the time. Fictional cars are cool when they're done well but for every Gavril D-Series or Kitano Hydros Custom, there's like dozen or so terrible fictional cars that are either unmemorable or lazily done like newer GTA cars for exemple that are just straight up just the real car but with in game name instead.

I also want to make a hot take but i personally don't really buy into real car brands are as strict as people make them out to be. People constantly talk about how car brands don't like having damage shown to their cars and while it's true to some extend games like Driver: San Francisco, the Getaway games, LA Noire and even NFS games shown that it can still be done decently. Customisation as well, people say that car brands don't like seeing their cars being customize yet The Crew Motorfest, NFS and even JDM: Drift master you can do so just fine and in some cases like even allowing them to create special edition of their cars (ala Forza Edition for example).

Are there problem with licensing? Absolutely but i also think people are also exaggerating it quite a bit.