Sounds pretty ambitious ben, best of luck
If you want ideas for 'painting' chrome in textures, the simplest way would be just to do those areas a very light grey (like Woody's pic shows the chrome areas as pretty much white). Personally, I've generally gone with a light-to-dark blended grey texture,
see here (not the best example, all that's of interest here is the rollbar, mirrors and exhaust pipes). I feel it's the best compromise as it adds a little bit of definition and keeps the appearance of the metal parts neutral. The drawback with either of these is that it doesn't really emulate the reflective properties.
If you're game however, Cobalt did a pretty clever chrome reflection effect on the wheels of Cowabunga
here.
It looks pretty realistic but would probably be quite hard to achieve, and of course it won't always match the terrain your're driving on.
Garret Lockhart also tried a similar effect with his Young Gun rep
here.
Hey, it just occurred to me, if you're using Windows XP you could check out the Silver visual style (open Display Properties -> Appearance tab and from the Colour scheme drop-down box pick Silver). You might get some ideas from the colours and blending used there.