Well, it's now several months after the accident and after the repair and here's what happened. I still have yet to receive any money for my damaged exhaust, my car squeaks and rattles, and there are still quite a few problems I have that the body shop should be fixing, but I'm tired of dealing with them. Anything that has not already been fixed, will come out of my own wallet because of an incompetent body shop and an insurance company unwilling to pay full amounts. The car's getting back into shape, but it'll be a while before it's perfect.

Note: If you're in the Dallas area and you need body work, please do NOT go to National Auto Repair located in the Addison area because despite impressive credentials and quite a nice dealer list, they are idiots and are unable to fix even simple squeaks and rattles and could not understand the difference between aftermarket and factory light bulbs. In fact, my projector lenses STILL don't match.

On Thursday July 24, 1997 at about 6:45pm I was on my way home from work on eastbound 635 about 3/4 of a mile ahead of US75 I had a collision with a grey '93 Camry. Here's the way it happened:

I was in the left lane, an exit only, so I wanted to go right. I started to lane change (and all of this was well within the speed limit--the flow of traffic was about 50 - 55mph) and half way through the change, I noticed in my mirrors that a car was coming up in the lane I was entering at VERY high speed relative to the flow of traffic. I hit the brakes (ABS) and tried to go back into my original lane and the attempt failed. My back end swung out and the fishtailing began. First, the car wandered over to the far right lane and I hit my back end on the concrete retaining wall and when I pulled back the other way and tried to straighten out, my back end fishtailed into the '93 Camry's passenger side rear end. Finally, I regained control just soon enough from hitting the concrete wall head on and hit it with the passenger's side front corner of my car. Luckily, no one was hurt. I called 911 on my cellular phone and the highway crews were quick to show up. Soon followed an ambulance and then a fire truck to make sure no one was injured and the cars were driveable. No police showed up. The Camry driver and I exchanged information and we were on our way.

As far as I can tell, all of the damage is to body panels and functionally, the car is fine. My only hopes is State Farm doesn't put the screwing to me too bad and my only loss will be the $500 deductible.

Here's what you've all been waiting to see: pictures of my wreck. The car went into the shop on 08 - 13 - 97 and I'll hopefully have it back by September, ready for me to install the brand new Borla exhaust system sitting in my living room.