About a week ago I purchased and downloaded "Trailmakers" for the PS4, one of this year's games which i think fits into this category. This is all about creating vehicles for travel on different surfaces, whether it'd be a car, helicopter, boat or submarine etc.
Most of the races though are on land and sometimes up in the air (Though the plane's controls are extremely sensitive, I can never get through those checkpoints
) Otherwise, the main campaign is to collect vehicle parts into UFOs, which sounds simple. However, because their world is so big and there are so many parts, it's a very long thought provoking campaign indeed.
But still, I've always wanted a replica of an experience like Gadget Racers (Choro Q3 I think it's called), one of my absolute favourite games from the PS2, which has these sorts of things, and I think I might have just found it here at last, 17 years on.