Activision might be convinced that this gives them a bad name as well. Maybe they'd do something to help, dig out an old code monkey or something.

Ok, I think I've fixed my problem. I'm using Windows 7 64 bit, -Glide + dgVoodoo + kill explorer.exe batch script + atiumdag.dll in Nitro Riders folder + Windows 95 compatibility mode on the shortcut.
It works on Nitro Riders, I can now play more than 1 mission at a time. The game doesn't crash anymore at the end of each mission.
I'm going to test it on I76 and see how much of the '+' steps I can remove until the problem returns.
EDIT: Final ingredients:
+ dgVoodoo
+ atiumdag.dll in Nitro Riders folder (for ATI users)
+ Windows 95 compatibility mode on the shortcut and nitro.exe
+ batch script, create with notepad, change extension to .bat:
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
start /w nitro.exe -glide
pause
start explorer.exe
+ link the shortcut to the .bat script
That works for me.

What does the atiumdag.dll do?

@ Lamberghini:
If I delete it, and keep the other steps, the game give this error:
Running software emulation mode
Failed to initialize 3D hardware acceleration
The game then crashes at the load menu:
Unhandled exception

Ok. I have an Nvidia card and was wondering if I was missing out on anything other than the game not working. :p

Just an update on my issues that creep up every now and then
I finally saw what was mentioned earlier when even limiting CPU cycles or framerate still leaves wobbly wheels. I only found this in Nitro though.
I played through the original game from beginning to end. I have to admit it was pretty awesome running 1920x1200 with 16xMSAA and AF maxed out. Never thought I76 could look so crisp :). With all the fixes in place I think I crashed a handful of times but usually at mission end/start. Pretty happy with the money spent at that point ;).
However when I went to play Nitro some of the problems began to creep up again. So more testing is in my future if I want to finish that addon.
Let me know how you guys fair. I'll try and see if wobbly wheels is intermittent or if I76.exe and Nitro.exe are just behaving differently.
As far as getting Multiplayer working does anyone know of an IPX / TCP-IP wrapper?
I noticed multiplayer mode has IPX as an option. The internet servers may be gone but that doesn't mean we can't get our multiplayer groove on!
*edit* Just saw some people got Kali working (man that brings back memories) but I believe Hamachi will also work.
[url=http://logmeinwiki.com/wiki/Hamachi:Gaming_over_Hamachi#IPX_gaming_over_Vista]http://logmeinwiki.com/wiki/Hamachi:Gaming_over_Hamachi#IPX_gaming_over_Vista[/url]

Pictures! Thumbnails! Screenshots! Me wantssss it, my precioussss...

This is as much for posterity as anything else!
I'm using the original CD game and have had a couple of problems different to you guys, the main one is in cutscenes, the video starts to get jumpy (like it's having problems buffering the cutscene but this happens even if i copy the cutscene to the pc from the disk)
anyway, i've got a reliable 55fps solution (according to fraps), the frame limiter program has no effect, not even in software mode.
Using zeckensacks glide wrapper 0.84c:
4mb texture
try high resolution
refresh rate by app
vsync by app pedantic
mip mapping by app
anisotropy 16
limit feature set - most fancy shaders
and resolution set to 1024 x 768
everything else as default.
I haven't changed sound acceleration and this is an athlon2 620, 2 gig ram, geforce gts250. the settings do make a line along the boundary between world edge and ceiling, but thats something caused by the graphics settings somewhere.
Taurus drives at reasonable speed and his wheels don't judder around! Hope this helps someone.

This topic seriously needs to be stickied.

Possibly it'd make GOG look bad if they did that..
You can favourite it, anyway.

Yeah, I did.
It won't make matters worse than the current stream of "Yet another crash\dissatisfaction\missing textures" posts... At the very least people will know what is the first place to look should something bad happen.

Tried your settings, but after about 5 mins textures start to get corrupted (dashboard, wheels, machinegun shots, etc).
Its a real shame. Indeed those configs reduce a lot the wheel wobble problem, but still no go :-(
Guess I have to find my old Pentium 2 to play this game reliably. :-(
Imagine how good it would be if this game ran on DOS? (Dosbox FTW).

Wonder if the game runs good on Wine.

I've gotten it to run decently on Wine (OS X) actually! I've not been able to twist the game's elbow into running with Glide or D3D yet, as I get the rainbow-puke texture corruption glitch when I try that, and there's no explorer to kill with Wine. I've even tried with different wrappers, and no luck.
Software mode runs fine and dandy, though, and Taurus doesn't wobble (probably because the heavy CPU load of Wine keeps the framerate down).

Just to update you guys:
I managed to get the game to run on glide using Dgvoodoo.
Settings:
DirectX 7 Mode (If I switch to DX9, the screen flickers a lot, unbeareable)
Fullscreen
32Bit
bit depth - Optimal
Checked items:
Monitor freq is closest
Trilinear Mipmapping
autogen mipmaps
textmem scaled to 4mb
Use hardware cache when possible
Use fastwrite
Closer to a real hardware
enable glide gammaramp
Texture mem = 65MB
Resolution set by the app.
Using these settings I can play the game without too many problems. Ill try those on Nitro Riders now.