A Montana Highway Patrol trooper on Interstate 90 near Billings clocked something wrong with a passing vehicle. Not the speed. Not the lane. The cargo was blocking the license plate on what turned out to be a 23-foot bright yellow banana traveling westbound toward Seattle.
Steve Braithwaite — UK-born, Michigan-based, and roughly 15 years into a nomadic life built around this car — pulled over, adjusted two boxes that had shifted across his novelty plate, and continued on his way without a citation. The trooper posted photos on Facebook, called the car “apPEALing,” and the comment section promptly buried itself in banana puns. Thousands of reactions followed. This is what tends to happen when a Guinness World Record rolls down a major American interstate.
A Ford F-150 in a Banana Costume
Underneath all that bright yellow fiberglass sits a completely roadworthy 1993 Ford F-150 — certified by Guinness World Records as the world’s longest custom banana car.
Braithwaite spent two years — 2009 to 2011 — wrapping that truck chassis in a sculpted fiberglass banana body at a total build cost of $25,000. The finished car stretches 22 feet 10.5 inches long, stands 10 feet 2 inches tall, seats four people in a row, and tops out at roughly 85 mph on a V8 engine. The license plate reads “SPLIT.”
Key details, per Guinness World Records and reporting by KTVQ and Car and Driver:
- Dimensions: 22 ft 10.5 in long, 10 ft 2 in tall
- Base: 1993 Ford F-150, V8 engine, completed 2011
- Pull-over history: Braithwaite has been stopped dozens of times — some reports suggest hundreds — across 15 years of cross-country travel
- Memorable stop: A Michigan trooper once skipped the ticket entirely and slipped a $20 bill around his returned license instead
The Man Behind the Peel
Braithwaite didn’t just build a novelty vehicle — he reorganized his entire life around driving it.
He sold most of his possessions, put the rest in storage, and went fully nomadic, according to Q2 News. When he rolls into towns, he gives rides. The banana car becomes a pop-up attraction — part outsider art, part civic mood-lifter — that turns a fuel stop or parking lot into an impromptu gathering.
“Driving around in a banana and having all these people, all these smiles and waves, affects me,” Braithwaite told KTVQ. “It actually does something fantastic.”
That response, consistent across years of local news segments and highway encounters, points to something beyond novelty. Braithwaite has described the car as a vehicle for spreading joy, and the evidence — troopers handing over cash instead of citations, comment sections erupting in wordplay, strangers lining up for rides — suggests the approach works.
The banana car is still out there on American highways. No ticket. No fixed destination. Just a UK-born man, a fiberglass fruit on a Ford chassis, and a license plate that says exactly what it is.
