There's actually a couple tutorials going around for drive-able vehicles already.
I made a quick attempt when 3rd person was introduced. Though there was no camera lock at the time, nor the ability to load multiple sounds or any way to lock various player controls. However these are all possible now so you can probably do better than what I have with some LUA scripting:
My crud driving test:
(different camera angles and inserted audio was all made in post editing and not in the actual test)
Here is my poor attempt at testing the physics of impact. I'm not good at LUA so there might be a way to apply force in directions so barrels and people go flying when you hit them. Im not sure.
Here's someone elses test with an interesting first person perspective:
and another:
If you are good at LUA, I'd lock the left and right player controls and override them yourself so the vehicle doesn't turn abruptly. Increase the acceleration time so its drawn out and the vehicle continues to build up progressive speed the longer you hold forward. Making a vehicle the player will require that you create a new FPE file to reference that vehicle model. Of course a deceleration option within the player options would help a great deal here