I concur. The lighting model, certainly as exhibited in that pic, isn't great. The reflections really damage the composition, as your brain is telling you you should be seeing the road, white line and grass reflected from this viewpoint, but it looks like a cubemap. Probably works well from the in-car view, but from this external view you get that definite 'uncanny valley' experience. Also the car's shader isn't too hot either, with a sort of silvery finish rather than a more expected gloss finish. It looks as though the car hasn't been painted and is just riding around in a buffed aluminium body. I think it has too much saturation in the reflections. If I were them I'd try just using the intensity pretty much for specular highlights. Unless there's a car out there that actually looks like this?!
Edit : I'll add that the top pic looks very different. The shadowing is very good, combining the hard shadow from direct sunlight with the soft AO shadow occluding sky-light. The muted colours help with the realism I think, but I expect that's more a result of taking from a scene then intentional.
