I miss the old Gran Turismo games that did this. Crappy car, drive those amateur league races, buying a used car
While I agree with you (Gran Turismo were a fantastic games, the progression felt amazing, and to this day GT2 is the game I have played the most in my life), the progress only really felt slow because as a kid we were still learning the game, both in terms of skill and in terms of knowing how it's structured.
As a kid, I started with a used japanese car, slowly upgraded it and carefully tested out ever so slightly more difficult races, and slowly got more money. All while struggling to get licenses only as I needed them. It was a while until I bought my first new car, and all those incremental turbo/supercharger, muffler/exhaust, engine and suspension upgrades felt like large steps. It wasn't until much later that I started getting good reward cars.
Just a few years back nostalgia kicked in and I decided to play the game again, now as an adult, experienced racing game fan. It was relatively easy to get gold in the first few licenses and get a decent reward car right from the start. With just a couple of the most important upgrades which I already knew what they are, I beat the race that gives you the Daishin Silvia. With the Daishin Silvia I beat the race that gives you that race-modified Audi TT. With the Audi TT you can beat several of the races that gives you an endgame car (one of the various 650~750 HP race versions of the Skyline, Supra, Viper, NSX, or GT-One) and the race that gives you a TRV Speed 12 (decent enough, but really valuable in that you can sell it for 500,000 credits, and thus can farm that race for easy money). I beat the game within 10 race events.
That's similar to Skyrim. When you first get lost in the world, it's an amazing experience. I can never have that again though, because I already know that the Lord standing stone (extra defenses) a bit northwest of Whiterun is crazy good early on, I know that paralysis potions trivialize most fights and can be made with two common ingredients (imp stool + swamp fungal pod), I know I can mix salt pile + deathbell (both very common) for slow potions to make good money, or giant's toe + wheat as well (more rare, but each potion ends up crazy expensive), and I know that if I level up enchanting to max as soon as possible I can then use a combination of enchantments that allow me to cast magic for zero cost. Once you know how to trivialize a game, the wonder is sort of gone.