I appreciate the in-depth feedback! I feel like I need to study art fundamentals to improve the visuals/presentation. I'd really like to make games are visually distinct and communicate a theme and your game was a great example of that.
Have any recommendations for sources on art knowledge?
For the collision I was lazy and let unity handle the rigidbody collision resolution with the street walls. the jittering is caused by me incrementing the cars position manually rather than using force velocity on the rigidbody. I personally hate rigidbody movement just too restrictive for me. I could've just set non-physics level boundaries by stopping the car's movement in the direction of a boundary when it reaches it and take away the rigid body from the street walls.