Transforms were too driving me crazy this morning, and I'm having some though times with simple trignometry

But I realised it was easier to have a Camera object with two TransformGroups: one for handling rotation and for translation. I use the .lookAt method on my rotation transform, multiply with the translation transform then to set as the view's transform. Not sure if this approach could be help you too.
Regarding moving the view relative to another coordinate system, I think you can achieve that by rotation the View's transform by the same of your vehicle, then apply a translation, then undo the first rotation.
I'm not an expert, but just an idea
