Husband gave me money towards my car purchase

[single317dad]

[...]doing so would also need to ignore the principle that separate property used to acquire other property retains the same characteristic.

Wouldn't that argument be defeated by the commingling of the separate and marital assets in the purchase of the new vehicle? ($17K per OP)

How would the value of OP's separate assets be determined (41% of the current private party value of the vehicle?) If the car is now worth $20k, that's $8275 separate and $11725 for equitable distribution.

To me, this case is more akin to OP using her grandmother's ring for the wedding and deciding for her 25th anniversary to melt that ring down into a new setting at a cost ~150% of the value of her grandmother's ring, and pay for that work using marital assets.