"Technically" it is the same, BeamNG is just a much more optimised and upgraded version of its engine. At the core its exactly the same idea.
Personally, I enjoy crashes in GTA III. I find the mayhem of body panels flying around in a crash extremely satisfying and the way cars get thrown around after you crash into them at full speed can be amusing, too.
Burnout Paradise. My favorite game since it came out. Well, until this one. I've owned BP on the X360, X1, and multiple computers. And the game was made before EA bought criterion, so it is actually pretty big free.
Really? GTA3, VC or SA? Driver have better crashes than these games. To the topic - for me any Dirt, GRID, Colin and others Codemasters games.