He spent two years building a giant motorised banana, then drove it across a continent

A two-line plan, executed in fibreglass

The Big Banana Car is exactly what it sounds like: a full-size motorised banana that Steve Braithwaite started building in 2008 and finished in spring 2011 with help from friends. The plan, as he states it, has two steps — "Build a huge motorised banana (Done that). Drive it all around the world (Working on it)." So far that means the USA, parts of Canada, and a brief run into Mexico, all under one banner: the world needs more whimsy.

The gimmick has a generous twist. Park the banana, and passers-by are invited to take a small memento left on the dashboard as a free keepsake — with one stated exception: "THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE MY PHONE!" The site is light on specs (no chassis, engine, or top speed) and heavier on mission; the next build is already underway, a "Dieselpunk" machine called the Starfield Dragonwing Intergalactic Speedster.

The thread's one real worry: the traffic stops

The discussion was warm — "silly big banana energy," as one reader put it — but it kept circling back to the same anxiety. Driving the most conspicuous vehicle in America means getting noticed by the people whose job is to notice:

"He just wanted to spread some joy and now he's risking his life repeatedly. One of these police stops it's not going to work out." — a reader with 14k+ karma

Not everyone read the stops as menace. One reader with an "anti-authority streak" found the dynamic almost funny:

"I did not like to read that he was pulled over so often, but… it's almost like reverse entrapment of the officers." — a reader who enjoyed the whole thing anyway

Everyone has a 'pulled over just to look' story

The banana turned out to be a prompt for a small genre of memories — people whose unusual cars made cops curious rather than suspicious.

"I used to drive a 1991 Suzuki Cappuccino… the police pulled me over on a regular basis — no tickets issued but lots of questions asked… an officer knocked on my window… and excitedly asked 'What kind of car is this?!'" — a former owner of a tiny kei sports car

Another bought one of the first Mini Coopers in his state in 2002 and got stopped so the officers could admire it. That's the quiet thing under the joke: a vehicle built purely to make strangers smile mostly works — and the recurring catch isn't mechanical, it's that maximum visibility on American roads is also maximum exposure.