I wonder how I can displaying vehicle damage. I am talking about an good way to show damage on screen. Witch kind of model are common in games and what are the benefits of them. What is state of the art?

One way i can imagine is to save a set of textures (normal/color/lightmaps, etc) to a state of the car (normal, damage, burnt out) and switch or blending them. But is this really good without changing the model?

Another way i was thinking about is preparing animations for different locations on my car, something like damage on the front, on the leftside/rightside or on the back. And start blending the specific animation. But is this working with good textures?

Whats about physik engines? Is it usefull to use it for deforming vertexdata? i think losing parts of my car (doors, sirens, weapons) can looks really nice.

my game is a kind of rts in a top down view. vehicles are not the really most importend units (its no racing game), but i have quite a lot in. thx for help