With this image I decided to play with the Use Background material. For lighting I used an HDRI image as well as a forground photo to match the HDRI. The car appears to sit on the sand although it is actually floating in front of the background photo. An invisible plane under the car with the Use Background material assigned to it allows the creation of a shadow which gives the illusion of a solid surface under the wheels of the car. It's a neat little trick. A dirt layer would make the car model look quite nice but that is outside the scope of this render test.

The HDRI and foreground photo were provided by hdrstock.com.