In some of the damage missions in this game, the target vehicle is on a prerecorded path; there's no actual AI. Both the truck stopping missions are some examples. The vehicles here have infinite mass, so not only are you not dealing more damage with harder hits/slams into them, you're going to be sent flying back. You have to scrape along them with continuous contact, or lightly bump into them repeatedly. The other damage missions are like the destroying 4 cars. Here, they are AI-controlled, and they're mostly like regular vehicles, and take more damage with stronger collisions into them; you also don't do any damage by scraping here.