I have a nephew who just loves cars and anything to do with them.
I have received parental approval to buy him a racing game for the family computer.

I expect they computer is your "Best Buy Special" using integrated Graphics.

So, I'm trying to find something nice and simply a young kid could enjoy.
He does not have an X-Box or anything of the sort.

It does not need to be fancy or modern.
If it's Free Great or if it's not, that is not a problem either.

And no, I'm not going to buy a $1000 gaming Rid for his parents so my nephew can play Gran Tourismo X. :>

I was going to suggest one of the NFS games, but it might be over-complicated for a 7 year old.. go to your nearest EB games (or other store) and look into those bargain bins they got or general electronics stores, that have that one revolving thing with older pc titles. That's all I got..

NFS3 was hardly complicated! It was also great fun and probably only costs £5 now.

I love the NFS series.

Mario Kart for SNES is still the best racing game for little kids ever made IMO.

Some of the SNES emulators make it look pretty decent too. And that would be free.

I liked the Mario Kart 64 but I don't know where the N64 emulators stand right now. I actually haven't checked out the emulator world in many years now.

I would suggest Need For Speed 6 - Hot Pursuit 2. This was the last game before all the hideous "tuner cars" took over the series. It is fairly simple gameplay, involving time trials and outrunning cops, etc. As the player beats more events or single races, he gains "money" to unlock more tracks and cars. I always enjoyed this game the best, and I know for sure it runs on Windows XP, and likely won't take a supercomputer to run. I ran it on high details on a Radeon 8500, so I'm guessing any modern Intel chipset shouldn't struggle.

Thanks All!

I will look into the NFS series!
(Note: Glad somebody typed out -Need for Speed or I would not have known :> )

I will also checkout the Mario thing.
I want it to be as kid friendly as possible.

"Running from the Police" may be frowned upon by the parents :>"

You can also play AS the Police

I love nfs underground, and it is like 6 years old? So it should run on a low end cp.

Try Trackmania Nations, it's pretty simple and it's free!

Trackmania would be a good idea. Or the mario series; I think NFS isn't that especially kid friendly.