I'm absolutely fucking rolling over the story I got today about my father's just-recovered stolen car. Normally how this goes is that if it comes back at all, it's totaled, an absolute mess inside, impounded as evidence in the commission of a crime, &c.
His stolen car got pimped the fuck out.
It was stolen about a month back. It's nothing special, a 20-ish year old sedan with some body damage, busted headlights, old tires, broken door speakers, electrical problems, &c. Blue Book value of maybe $1300. It was recovered with all of the body damage repaired, new xenon headlights, new tires and rims, a brand new stereo system with a big set of speakers and replacements for the broken ones, a brand new GPS system, the works. Probably ~$3-4000 of work and parts put into it. The dude who had it had his collection of high-end caps on display in the rear window, it was full of belongings, they were using my grandfather's handicap tag to park in handicap parking at the place where it was located, so on and so forth. The only thing wrong with it was that the steering column is still cracked from where they hotwired it, so the key doesn't work. The nearest we can figure is that it was a targeted theft aiming for a cheap, easy-to-steal sort of car that could be flipped and sold to people who have difficulty getting insurance, financing, &c.
Obviously they're getting it inspected by their mechanic and are in contact with the detective handling the GTA investigation to get it swept for drugs/weapons, but if the damage to the steering column can be repaired he's looking at having an almost-new car that'll be good for another 20 years instead of the broken-down poorly maintained piece of crap that was stolen from him.