Further, its not like they immidiately turn into that sort of hubcap once you start moving, they model the induvidual spikes and actual alloy up to a certain speed, then it switches to a more blurry one, and then to a even more blurry one (they all rotate etc).
If this is the case then I take back what I said. I thought you could use the rims as an indication of when a shot was in-game or not, and that the captures of a parked car from such angles could only be photo-mode.
It appears not to be that clear cut, though apparently.
Hubcap-speed-rims are there because its hard to accurately rims going around at a fast enough speed... or something. It either looks to slow, or doesn't look very convincing.
Right now, GT:HD does always show them in full 3d, and like you say, they don't always turn fast enough. Maybe that has changed in GT5rologue, I'll check the videos again.
I get your point in any case. Which leads me to another quesiton: can you freely move the camera around your car in the game?
@Capeta: yes that was me. Now that I have the game myself, I would just like to modify that to 'severely broken' . Like a lot of other things in that game. Other discussion though!