The main problem is how to script it to make it work in-game
Make nodes after various parts of the vehicle, such as:
trunk
frontBumper
Then make alternate, damaged versions of them named like:
trunkDamaged
frontBumperDamaged
In the script, keep a list of node names. Then, when the vehicle's damage level changes, go through the list and swap each node out with the damaged variant until you reach a point in the list where the vehicle hasn't been damaged enough. For those, just go through and apply the normal node.