I just took a pic with the 2x optical zoom from waaaaaaay back, and sure enough there's far less perspective distortion in the image than in the pic above where I filled the frame with car @ 2x.
There's still more than the binocs + 2x version, but much less than the 2x photo above (you can't see as much of the rear tires).
So... if folks have a digital camera with a lot of resolution, this may be another option: max out the optical zoom, and go waaaaay down the road before taking the pic. Then crop the resulting image.
Mine's only 2MP, so it won't really work. To get the rear tires to disappear in the image, the car is only about 50 pixels wide in the resulting image
So I will have to stick with the binoculars + camera method.