First Car Meme

Another meme is running about the gunblogosphere:

So here's the meme. Long answers or short.
1. What was your first car? Model, year, color, condition?
2. What adventures did you have in it, good or bad?
3. What happened to it, what's the end of the story?

My first car was a doozie.  A 1976 Ford LTD with a 400 Cubic Inch V8.  It was bananna yellow with a poop brown vinyl top.  It looked a whole heck of a lot like this:

Does this have "Chick Magnet" written all over it?  No.  No it doesn't.

 I bought it for a dollar.  Seriously.  It was in pretty good shape, but the previous owner had Alzheimer's, and kept showing up with more mystery dents in the car.  So her family sold it to a 16 year old  who needed a cheap car for a buck.

It was affectionately named  "The Banana Boat".  It was hard to love a car like that, but I had a LOT of respect for it's size, power, and carrying capacity.  It did just about everything:

• I had 12 people in it at one time.  

• I got it over 120MPH several times.

• I put about 17 alternators into it, and carried a spare in the trunk with tools and could swap an alternator on the side of the road in 15 minutes.    

• It ate electrical components like candy. 

• It did a pretty good job off road, and would climb hills like no one's business.  

• The trunk would fit a keg in it, standing up (no tap), with ice around it.  

• All this while getting a grand total of EIGHT miles per gallon. 

This car did a lot of service to my family.  After I got my next car (1983 Toyota Tercel), my older brother started driving this car.  I saw him lose control in it, slide off the road, run through 2 fences, a two stone mailboxes, and a low rock wall.  The car kept on driving with only minor cosmetic damage.  Shortly afterwards, a piece of foil was dropped into the oil, and the engine started losing compression.  It was sold to someone else who used it for parts, and the last I saw it, it was under a tree on the side of the road in Johnson City, Texas.

Rest well, Banana Boat.  You deserve it.