Rick,
VERY cool story on your first car!
I am really glad you went after the guy who did it!
A very similar thing happened to my 2nd car.
It was hit by a drunk driver at 3 am while parked in front of my parents house. I still remember the sound...I thought he had hit every car on our street!
I only had the car a year and had just got it painted. I had bought rally wheels for it, sanded them down and painted them with extra paint from my car. Unfortunately, my car was totalled before I ever got to put them on (I was going to get new white letter tires that week). Since I never got to see my car with the new wheels and tires, I would want this one back more than the others (even though I would love to have any of them back!
)
The guy who did this "hit & run" got away with it. I knew who it was, it was the boyfriend of a neighbor down the street. He claimed "his friend" took his car that night
, but I found his extra set of keys that he had in one of those magnetic boxes in the street. I guess they had fallen off when he hit my car.